Trying to tell you what it's like to go and serve in New Orleans is a little like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and trying to describe it to you over my cell phone.

Ezekiel looked out over the plains and they were filled with bones.

The first time I went to New Orleans, last November, I was struck by the mile upon mile of empty shells of tainted houses that go on from neighborhood to neighborhood – poor, middle class and rich alike.

And crossing into Mississippi – it was the piles of rubble going on into Alabama – for hundreds of miles!

The tears streamed down my face and I wondered, with the prophet, if life could come into these bones again...

A vision of sinews and flesh:

21 people from age 16 – 76 traveled to New Orleans on April 17 to help with rebuilding.

We stayed at the Good Shepherd UCC in Metairie and we worked two days there and 3 days in the city.

At the church we worked with an electrician from Maine and completed about 90% of the rewiring of the sanctuary building. We also completed most of the wall boarding that had been started by other groups and got the first coat of mud and the first sanding done.

We did the mudding and sanding and primed a classroom in the parish hall and installed insulation and ceiling tiles and painted a hallway.

We sorted something-over 1000 pounds of books that we carried with us and bagged up the myriad of bears and bunnies that cushioned their trip – about 12 to 14 clear, 30 gallon bags full.

And.... we cleaned out soggy personal possessions from two lovely middle class homes in the city, ripped out the walls, scooped out the insulation, pulled down the ceilings and carried it all in wheelbarrows to dump on the curb. We were delighted to find a few minimally damaged pictures and a small remnant of a set of lovely china that could be saved - memories of a life that has truly passed... All that is left of years and years of hard work to provide a home for a family.

These were all wonderful accomplishments and TERRIBLY needed. But there was so very much more to our journey!

The bones – even with these basic layers of sinew and flesh – still need the breath of life... the breath of the Spirit!

And the winds of the Spirit surely blew in the Good Shepherd UCC and in Metairie and in New Orleans that week!

We touched lives and they touched ours in ways that will change us all forever!

Just being there is a sign of hope... People at the car rental agency, in the airport and in the stores would come up and thank us for being there. The body of Christ was present in the flesh – the CHURCH was in New Orleans !

Listening with love was a tremendous gift and our first priority. As the months pass folks are desperate for a new ear to hear the ongoing trauma of their lives. Prayer shawls and quilts and hugs were incredible concrete signs of our real thought for them and our ongoing prayers.

Our January work group cleaned out Hermine's house in the upper 9 th district. It was she that taught me that tearing down is also hope! After a long sad day of emptying out furniture, clothing, many,many, many shoes, pictures and certificates, toys and bedding, more shoes, walls and insulation – carrying it all to the curb and watching the dump truck haul it away – she came to my side and said “I'm so glad! Now the giving up is over and everything from now on is rebuilding!”

One of our team members is a member of a quilt group from our UCC church in Templeton. When our April missionaries left she sent down a very special quilt for Hermine. It was a quilt of shoes – and when Hermine came to meet me at our April house and opened the quilt she threw back her head and laughed and cried for a good 4 minutes – saying over and over – “my shoes, my shoes – these are my shoes! Look my shoes, my shoes!” And then she said – “I don't believe that you still remember me after all these months.” I told her we'd been praying for her every day – and she said “really, I could feel it - I've told so many folks here of how considerate and gentle you all were.”

We sent Hermine off with her quilt and $200 in gift certificates to Target, Sears and Home Depot.

She was a teacher until all of the New Orleans schools were closed. She is still out of work but has now found daycare for her elderly parents (her dad – a jazz musician will soon celebrate his 100th birthday). Now she can start to find a job near their home where she and her family are living until her home in the upper 9 th can be repaired.

For her there was joy and love and breath in the arms of the church – in being remembered –in prayers - and in a quilt of shoes.

So much is in shambles and out of control for everyone on the Gulf Coast . Repairing a home touches one family - rebuilding the Good Shepherd Church gives hundreds of people a place that is becoming whole! In the church clean-up members watched their hymnals and Bibles, pews and carpets, church school and office supplies all thrown out the doors. Years of building and dreaming going to the dump truck. Their building is not in the flood zone – flooding was due to human negligence during the storm - and there is no flood insurance for them - only a small amount of wind damage insurance for roof repair. But, our donations to the UCC Hope Shall Bloom Fund are paying the staff salaries and have already payed half of the $200,000 it cost for mold remediation. And, as I mentioned earlier the work of our January and April teams has completed a huge amount of the initial building work.

But most important of all is the overwhelming presence of team after team of UCC members from all over the country staying at Good Shepherd to help rebuild the city. Good Shepherd Church was in a fragile place in relation to the UCC before the storm... but all ideological and social differences melt away when they find themselves surrounded by loving hands and hearts and prayers and financial support to maintain and rebuild their church home. They find themselves in the incredible web woven of church family – the body of Christ as we proclaim and live it in the United Church of Christ! And in response they commit themselves to reach out in love and justice to help others and to heal the land.

As we prepared for and lived out our week in New Orleans we talked often of listening to our hearts. Of discerning where the voice of God was calling us to be.

Four people went out on three mornings to read to children in an elementary school. A social worker helped senior citizens fill out forms for Medicare D and served as a logistical organizer for our group. Three pastors and the social worker attended a meeting with the leaders of Beecher UCC – a church on the edge of the lower 9 th district - to grieve their losses and begin to envision a future. A man handy in electrical work helped a church family rewire their home. Each day we held up the primary construction focus and then entertained all the possibilities for other ways to serve, and folks “followed their hearts.” Incredible stories began to surface about being in the right place at the right time. A reader who happened to read a favorite book of one small girl – a book that had been lost in the storm – and then the child's joyous greeting of her mom with the words “look mom – I got my favorite book back! The one I lost in the hurricane.” And mom's tears for such a small gift of love for her precious girl.

Our team took lots of gifts. The books and toys and money, the prayer shawls and quilts and blankets. Our gifts of financial support were small in proportion to the tremendous needs of hundreds of thousands of residents with no flood insurance

But a small bundle of gift certificates was a hugely significant gift to a grandfather – the single working adult in family with 2 adult children and 3 grandchildren living in one small FEMA trailer,

They were huge to 2 single moms, each working for $9000 a year as teacher's aids, and to a fisherman who lost everything - for whom we bought about 50 of the 400 traps he needed to support his family again, they were inspiration to several families out of work trying to rebuild, and new possibilities to two teachers who could buy supplies for their classrooms. Our hearts were open and so many lives were touched.

And after all of that we still left $5000 for the church for supplies during our week of work for them and toward new flooring for the platform in the sanctuary. And then we left about $1000 for the UCC area disaster coordinator – for tools and supplies and $4000 more at Good Shepherd for aid to individuals in the city and in Metairie . It felt like the loaves and fishes – the more we spent – the more there was in the envelope...

And with all that material aid and love swirling around there was an important gift to group members. A brief time when they could really focus on discerning God's call for them in this small laboratory of mission work. Where is your heart leading? Where is it that God is guiding you to today? What word would God have you speak? What book should you read today to a child in a nearby classroom? For one individual missionary, is today a day of tearing down or of building up? Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for both – where is God waiting for you today?

And the stories of our group began to surface. Again and again we reflected that our day had found us in just the place we needed to be – even when it wasn't just where we thought we'd be going (a little like Jonah and the whale some days). And at the end of some of those days we felt a little like we we'd been spit up on some beach – bone weary and grateful for food and rest. Our lives were changed in ministering to Gulf Coast residents – AND they were changed because we focused on a new way to walk with God and our community of faith.

We are the body of Christ and no matter what denomination we come from we offer the safety net of hope woven of hands and prayers and material gifts. For Good Shepherd and Beecher and Central and St. Matthews and Little Farms and Teche (all UCC churches in the New Orleans Area– we are there! We are family and they are delighted to meet all the long lost brothers and sisters!

One final story...

About a month ago, Carolyn Mains – the contact person from Good Shepherd for all work groups – called me on the phone. We talked a long time and then she said “Shantia, I want you to know that the church is in New Orleans! FEMA has not done much for us and the Red Cross has been a disappointment – but the church is in New Orleans ! The Mennonites are here, the Amish are here, the Baptists are here, the Methodists are here, the Presbyterians are here, the Episcopalians are here, the UCC is here. Every where you look there is the church!”

You are there.... and you can continue to be there – through the Worcester Area Mission Society, through the Massachusetts Conference UCC, through your prayers and your gifts. You can be there in person or through supporting representatives to help with a work that will take years and years!

You can also pray for and with the folks of the Good Shepherd UCC. And they would like to pray for you if you will send them your church's prayer list.

So how is God calling you to minister to and through the Good Shepherd UCC? Where is YOUR heart leading you? Please listen for the voice of God...

The Rev. Nancy Shantia Wright-Gray
Mission Educator and
WAYS Coordinator for the
Worcester Area Mission Society, UCC