Friday- Practicing Justice- service day

Friday was our day to do practice justice. This was the day we were assigned a service project somewhere around the city of New Orleans. There was a variety of projects each group was assigned. For instance some groups went and helped run day camps with kids. Others cleaned out swamp lands. Some groups went to help at a food shelter.
Our group was given-environment sustainability. We were not quite sure what that meant...but we were up for anything.

A group woke up extra early to head to the famous Cafe Du Monde for beignets!

 

Sugar coma anyone!?

Good morning!!!

It started to storm about 10:00am...lots of lightning and thunder!!!  We waited the storm out until there was a break to venture the 3 blocks to the dome where we would meet our bus for our project.
Our walk over was a wet one. We tried to avoid larger puddles at first, but it was no use... water was EVERYWHERE!
We ended up crossing the street in water up to our knees!

 Needless to say we got pretty drenched... but made it to the dome safe and sound!
It was kind of a learning moment for these kids to get a little bit of a glimpse of how quickly New Orleans can flood...just with a storm....its no hurricane, but still pretty crazy!

Once we got to the dome we had some waiting to do as service projects were getting re-assigned and moved around due to weather. We had Subway lunch provided for us, and sang some songs till we knew more information!

 

Our group stood up front and taught the larger group a song! "I've got joy, down in my heart. Deep deep down in my heart!"

This gives you an idea of only a fraction of the people who were just in our group to serve that day. They estimated 12,000 serving a day for 3 days!

Our service companion Hilary informed us if the weather held we would be heading to deconstruct a couple houses, and salvaging most of the materials so they could rebuild new houses! Pretty cool!

Sadly the weather didnt get much better. We were given the option to head to the convention center for a few smaller service project options... one including hearing a man's story of his experience living through Katrina and watching a short documentary on the breaking Levi's in New Orleans. 

One of our saving graces from the day was when we hoped on our random bus assigned for the service day... it was our original bus drivers... BOB AND LARRY!  It was so great to see some familiar faces! 

They accommodated to our needs and were able to drop us off at our hotel directly, instead of back at the dome and making us walk home in the rain! It was a ray of sunshine in our day of being flexible, go with the flow Lutherans!

We had some Chinese food delivered to the hotel before heading to the dome for more speakers, singing, and dancing. 

It was a rainy day, with times of waiting, sitting, wondering, and changes. Our kids were AWESOME through it all! No whining or complaining. They made the best of every situation and have had such greta attitudes this whole trip! We are so blessed with this group!