More pics from New Orleans

The top two pics are houses that were literally picked up from their sites by the flooding and settled in other places - one in the front yards of two other houses and the other in the middle of a street. It might be a little hard to tell, but the 4th picture is a Shrimp boat that settled in the street of a residential neighborhood. Seeing things like that was almost surreal. There's still so much work to be done.













This last picture is of a church in downtown New Orleans. Thursday afternoon, Crossroads (the mission we were working with) had scheduled in some time for us to go into the city. As impressive as the church looked on the outside, it was even more beautiful on the inside. Such a stark contrast to all the destruction we had seen in so many other places. It was nice to take a few minutes, sit inside and reflect on everything the week had brought on. I just kept thinking how the power of God had been displayed over the city. And now I believe He wants his love to be displayed in real and practical service to its people.

New Orleans trip

Here are a few pics from a service trip that I and some students from our campus ministry took to New Orleans. The primary thing we did while there was "gutting" houses - stripping almost everything out down to the frame - that had been ruined by flooding. Sights like you see in the first picture were all too common.



As things were taken out of the house, the debris was literally piled up in front of the house. It was difficult doing that as the homeowners looked on and went through what little there was to be salvaged. Flooring, celings, dry wall, even each nail was to be taken out. The goal was to leave the frame and prepare the house to be rebuilt. The last picture is a home that was finished. I'll post a couple more times about this over the next two days with a few more pictures. I'll tell you more about the people we met and some things I learned from my time there. Pray for the people of that city. It's a long road ahead for them.

FSU vs. Duke

So FSU upset Duke tonight in college basketball action to pull even with Duke on the season, one win apiece. It was a good game, especially fun to watch since I'm an FSU fan. Win over #1 should also guarantee FSU a spot in the Big Dance later this month. But remember what I said about refs in college basketball a couple posts ago? Check out the free throw statistics from their two games this year.

1st game in Durham: Duke 31-43 FSU 10-11 (Duke won 97-96)
2nd game in Tallahassee: Duke 10-17 FSU 32-40 (FSU won 79-74)

Ok, so it's a pretty small sample size, but a pretty telling stat. Maybe I shouldn't throw around the word 'conspiracy', but it's pretty obvious the human element (officials/referees) seems to be a little influenced by the home crowd.