New Orleans Mission Trip 2013

I was blessed to be asked to go with our youth group on a week long mission trip to New Orleans.  Here are some of the highlights from the week. #NOMT2013  #17G2G

We loaded up and departed Saturday morning at 5:30am.  The first bathroom break was at 7:15!!!!!  Yeah, this is not the way I'm used to traveling.We arrive in NO about 8:00pm.  We met John Martindale.  He took us on a tour of the French Quarter. We did avoid Bourbon Street itself.

Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral

Austin and Allison Marlett

Sunday morning we go to the Jefferson Parish Juvenile Detention Center. We met Chris and Sister Cathy.   Stephen and Abby led the group in some praise and worship.  Hayley gave the devo.  We then prayed for Cathy and her ministry.

Chris and Sister Cathy (not a nun, everyone just calls her that)

Re-enactments: We couldn't take pics while inmates were there.

 

That afternoon, we spent time doing small group team building.  Yes, the Camo team was the winner of the play-dough Bible story. (That was my group!)

Then we ended each night with a message and worship time.

Monday through Thursday we worked at an elementary school (priming, painting classrooms, cleaning out storage buildings, sorting books, etc.), visited a Pregnancy Counseling Center, played with kids at a projects playground, toured the 9th Ward devastated by Katrina.  Probably the most eye-opening experience was the two times we went to the homeless mission and overpass hangout.  The job for our group was to divide into groups of three and each group had to go talk to the homeless and find out why they were there, give them water and food the second trip, pray with them if they wanted it.  It's a strange feeling to go see almost a hundred people staying under this very long overpass and walking up to them. But this turned out to be the best experience for just about all of our group.

 

John giving info about Katrina and the 9th Ward.  We broke into the abandoned church in the background and prayed.

 Then Friday was our "fun" day.  It started with us going to a couple of old cemeteries.  Then we went to a swamp tour and then an alligator ranch.

Then on our way home on Saturday, we made a slight detour through West Monroe to visit the Duck Dynasty scenes.  Us and about 300 of our closest friends!

GREAT MISSION TRIP

Click on Flickr at top for many more pictures.