11/20/05 - Sunday
Day 7 We are sitting here at the airport waiting for our flight to board and I am still thinking how blessed I have been to have such a wonderful team of great people, and a great God that we were here to serve. We got up this morning, got ready and packed up the van. We had our last devotions before church, and I was barely able to read through my passage of Isaiah 58:6-12 as I cried in gratitude for these “repairers of broken walls and restorers of streets with dwellings.” They had all been exactly my answer to my prayer on the first day here.

I told everyone how proud I was to have worked with them, and how they were all probably much better leaders than I. I said how we had all done our best to do exactly what we had set out to do in serving God by serving the people here. I told them how we had already started to receive a good report from the Kenner Vineyard staff, who had instructed their volunteers to follow our example. Pastor Phil told their volunteers that they have a real opportunity to touch people’s lives as they pray with them as we had been doing. He told them how one lady (Miss Ida) had called into the church to tell them how our help had changed her life, and how she was so thankful and offered us a donation and how we had refused. She said that she would send us all pralines as thanks.

Mike W. also said how this had been one of the greatest things he has ever experienced, and he hoped he would have more like it. He expected that this trip will have changed the way he looked at service. We just saw so many lives touched and hope restored. Every single person that we helped, we could see the change in their demeanor, their words, and in their eyes. They all prayed with us, and Miss Mattie even came with one of her “daughters” to church at the Vineyard today.

Pastor Phil spoke on the greatness of God, and how it is great thoughts of God that give us hope and a positive attitude even in the face of adversity. This was a great message for the people of the New Orleans area and one for me as well as we fly back home. We are little over an hour and a half away from Boise, and I am so looking forward to seeing and holding my family and sleeping in my own bed again.
I was just chatting with Jo Ann about how satisfying and rewarding it is to do this type of work. It is a big part of why I jumped on the chance to go and then to go again. So many of us, especially those of us in “middle-age,” begin to wonder if what we do is really worthwhile in the grand scheme of things. We thank God for our jobs and how they provide for our families, but doing relief work, especially when we have directly touched and blessed people, leaves no room to doubt that what we have done was worthwhile. To see Ann, Onil and Miss Mattie, all there worshiping together, was the ultimate wrap-up to this wonderful trip.

Thank you, Lord Jesus for blessing and using us so very much. Thank you for the way that you have used it to change me and to help me to stop worrying and trust that you are in control of all things. Please be with these people of New Orleans through this holiday season, and all of those that have been affected by the disasters of this year.