Hi Cincinnati! I am so sorry that I haven't blogged before now, but a comedy of errors has occured. I'll explain more later. First, let me tell you that for the most part, everybody made it down here ok. The bus with the teens and chaperones was fine. One of the RV's had a blow out, and one of the adults van's was in an accident. By the grace of God, noone was hurt, and everybody could continue to come down.
Since I was on the bus, you get to hear more about that exciting adventure. We stopped at our first rest area deep into Kentucky. We were stopped by a truck driver who was one of the top 13 safest drivers in the nation. He was there from the state of Kentucy Highway patrol with a huge painted 18 wheeler to talk to motorists about highway safety, and blind spots the truckers can't see. Once he found out that we were on the way to New Orleans for a mission trip, he wanted to take the groups picture for our "good works". He said that the Kentucy State Highway patrol was putting together a collage of pictures of his state's volunteers. We told him we were from Ohio, and he said that he didn't care. . .hmmm. Anyways we get back on the bus and rode, and rode, and rode. We watched a lot of movies and talked, and slept in the aisles. (Well, the 6 foot boys did, because they just didn't have enough leg room with all the stuff we had to carry down with us.)
We finally got off the highway on Louisa St. in New Orleans. The bus went dead silent. The teens turned the movie and cd's off by themselves. The destruction was apparent even in the darkness of night. No one said a word, and for teenagers, that's pretty amazing. You could see trees sitting on houses, boats in the middle of the yards, and rotting buildings with the sides falling in. It was so sad. We had seen the pictures of the destruction, but we were still unprepared for the real sights.
We get to St. Gabe's and are led to our rooms. The whole first floor of the building we are staying in doesn't have electricity or running water. It was very creepy, and I was thinking "What have I got us into." Then we go upstairs, and they tailored everything to the teens. The rooms were air conditioned, the floors were cleaned and waxed, the bathrooms had running water, and brand new showers were installed for us. (Of course, we weren't able to use them until the next day because they wanted to install the air conditioners in the shower room for us. But, they are wonderful!) They even put the boys in a different wing than the girls for me! (This is always a nice thing for the chaperones.) After we unloaded the bus of gear, food, tools, and supplies we went into the church (which is also the cafeteria area, club time area, etc.) and had ending prayer. It was a very nice end to the long day.