Pictures from the worship team’s journey…

pictures from day 5…
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pictures from the festival…
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pictures from the burning house…
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pictures from the mud out house…
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pictures from the house we worked on…
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misc. pics…
the mess tent @ crosspoint
angie taking a picture in new orleans
new orleans - completely abstract but I liked the way it looks
tim standing in front of cafe du monde - jazz players in the background
tim inside the house we worked in
the room the boys slept in for the week
suzy…
trump…

I wake up at 7:30 after a 4-6am shift, the land is flat, uninteresting, unceasing… Kansas. I had an “easy” shift the during the night because Cindy had a coffee at Cafe Du Monde which apparently kept her wired for a good 9 hrs. However, waking up in a car after driving through the night is never easy - I fight nausea till the afternoon. Driving… I mentioned that I couldn’t find any Trump Ice when we left - but I find out that Cindy had grabbed what was left before I checked and surprised me with a fresh bottle. I finish my slogan for Trump Ice… (80’s rock band, heavily influence by Black Sabbath) “He’s as cold as Ice; He’s willing to sacrifice, your soul for a dollar!” (Announcer voice) “Trump Ice - the only bottled water endoresed by the Donald and laced with cocaine to give you the buzz you need to buy and sell real estate, everyday!” - perhaps I have taken this too far… Driving… Colorado, Wyoming… I watch “Gladiator” for the nth time - but relate and react to if differently then I ever have before. Instead of revenge I see a love story between and man, his wife, and his child. Perhaps being away from my family for this length of time in this way has sharpened my awareness of to this storyline… & perhaps, my own storyline. Home…

We decide to go home via a different route - we through New Orleans which is about an hour from Gulfport. We drive through some of the areas that were affected by the flooding - the only way I can describe it is “dirty”. The neihborhoods were seemingly hopelessly filthy. We pass through these neighborhoods as our main destination is to meet up with some friends of the Broadbents in the French Quarter @ Cafe Du Monde. We eat French doughnuts, have some laughs and we head back on the road. We pass by Super Dome where many of the residents sought shelter… and the home of the 1986 superbowl (da bears). Darkness, sleepless, driving. It’s all to familiar. 33 hrs of road lay before us. Again I resist the temptation to watch a movie. I know that at 3 my team will need me one more time. It will hurt, it always does…

6am, wake up to the sound of Kris’ cellphone alarm. Somehow I got talked into going appx 30 miles to go check out another region that was hit by the hurricane - we desire to take more pictures, and we’ve been assigned to go find a house that we are going to send a team to to “mud out”. (all this before church…) We soon find out why they call it a mud out… mud. The house is intact but was flooded and everything inside is toast. The waters leaving mud over everything. To see cribs and baby toys all over the floors, caked in mud brings the reality of this couple situation home. A teddy bear, dora the explorer doll, a jump seat, all remind me of the wife and daughter waiting for me at home. The thought of the pain this would have caused them si more than I want to imagine. I miss them. With our mission complete & pictures taken we head back to Crosspoint where we are to lead music in 2 1/2 hrs. We lead, things go well, people are very responsive and thankful for our prescence - we make new friends that we have to leave behind in a matter of hours. We say good-bye to the old and the new alike. We prepare to head home, but not before Jon, the worship leader at Crosspoint, and his wife take us out to Raising Cane’s for lunch - where we can order chicken strips or… chicken strips. Apparently in the south variety is not a priority - hence I never saw peanut butter twix - but the food is always good and the company even better and this was no exception. After lunch we say good-bye to Doc & Kris as they head off to the airport to fly out. The original four of us finish packing up. I head over to the water tent to find me some bottles of Donald Trump water, called “Trump Ice”, Which Doc & I affectionately call “Trump Cocaine”, as we cannot get enough of it and the whole “ice” thing… because why call it ice? it’s not ice is water - what is he trying to communicate to us? snow, crystal, ice… Alas there are no more bottles of Trump cocaine, all I have left is a bottle from yesterday - I’ll have to ration it out. Doc & Kris are gone, everyone has gone home from church, all the work teams have left to go work, and so we leave not with a bang, but in silence…

Today is one of the main reasons we came down - Crosspoints Christmas festival. Similar in style to Harvest’s Celebrate Freedom. We’ve come to provide some live music and some food support. We played perhaps the longest set I’ve ever played… just over 2 hrs. played 18 songs and had a blast. The team was in fine form as we, as I like to say, rocked the Casbah. Afterword complete exhaustion… enter the greatest challenge in our trip… Catfish Charlie. Israel took us and some others out to a shack looking restarunt called Catfish Charlie. No one on our team was exactly to thrilled about eating catfish but we decided to go along. Kind of thought they have a bunch of stuff on the menu, they only had catfish and thankfully chicken. But I’m proud to say that I ended up having some catfish, and is was good - I had more catfish then chicken. And then the rest of the team at least took a bite of the catfish. I wish I was on tv ’cause then I’d been one step closer to $50,ooo. Well, I’ve been writing this waiting for the shower and it has become available, I must shower and sleep.

As I look blankly into a computer screen, I ponder todays events and ponder why do I stay up so late pondering todays events. My day started by replacing one computer with another. Pictures from Harvest for a project were sent to me - I touch them up and sent them back - but one is too large to send via email, o joy. Thus begins my search for the password to our web server, which took entirely to long, much frustration…
I was supposed to be picked up for lunch and then taken to roof a house - but no one comes, and hence I missed out on a house catching on fire down the street from the house. (I’ll throw some pics on the web that I recieved via a very nice lady). Tim recounted how someone yelled fire and they saw one guy come out. They went over and helped another guy out of the house, who was still holding a cigarette and seemed to be drunk smelling of liqour. The two guys claimed not to know how the house caught on fire… I’m sure being toasted and smoking had nothing to do with it… Their dog died. Tim claims to have seen two cats running from the scene and he blaims them for setting the fire to kill the dog. I for one believe him. Late in the evening I finally have a chance to shoot some pictures… (links coming). unfortunately I didn’t have much time but through my pondering about what I wanted to communicate through my pics, which I’ve been pondering this whole time, I thought that perhaps that idea is the idea of rememberance… ’cause if you enter gulfport and don’t go south of the tracks you wouldn’t think that much was wrong, so perhaps with all disasters time passes and people move on while the people affected are left to deal alone…
Later we eat, we practice for tomorrow until we are exhausted. I still have a few more things to do tonight. I work on a laptop trying to get our keyboard to work and ponder as I look blankly into the computer screen.