coming back from New Orleans...

First of all, let me say a huge thank you to everyone who supported our team in prayer this past week. We had a great trip, and it would not have been possible without the support of the entire UPCS family. Thank you!

And now for an update:

We landed in SeaTac on Saturday night at 11:30 PM, a little ahead of schedule, after spending a week living and working not far from the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. As many people have heard, the Lower 9th was the hardest hit of all the neighborhoods in New Orleans, with Hurricane Katrina not only flooding homes, but even smashing and knocking them off of their foundations. Now, three and a half years later, the neighborhood is still basically uninhabited, with its residents still unable to return and rebuild.

Our team had four different job sites during the week, all of them located in the Lower 9th or its surrounding neighborhoods. We worked on flooring, roofing, painting, and even warehouse reorganizing. We put up doors, installed trim, and loaded trash into dump trailers (or tried to). All in all, we did our best to help move a few homes along towards being reinhabited by their rightful owners.

Now, I've got a confession to make. I've been on several short term mission trips (including three trips to New Orleans), and every time I came back I thought I should post but didn't. I had so many thoughts and emotions that I wanted to share, the idea of trying to fit them all into a post was overwhelming. Instead I relied on debriefing nights with our mission teams, putting together presentations for the whole church, and talking about the trips over meals with interested people to get it all out there. But now, I've got this blog dedicated to ministry (which I wanted to update while we were there but couldn't), and it's time I gave this a shot.

So...where to begin?

Obviously, there's no way to put what the whole trip meant on here. I think that's part of what makes going to New Orleans such an important and worthwhile endeavour. Every year different people get different things out of the trip (and give different things to it), and the only common denominator is that people keep coming back (we shared our lodgings with a group of retired church goers from out east who had been back three times in the past 12 months).

So...where to begin?

I think what I need to share today is how I see this trip to New Orleans fitting in with the larger vision of our ministry, UnitedLife, and our church's (UPCS) entire body. You know, there were many elements of this trip that just made it into a great experience: the work, the people we encountered, the things we witnessed, the friendships that were deepened. But my prayer is that this trip would be more than a good or even life-changing experience. My prayer is that it would be our signature experience.

Tubby Smith, the highly regarded coach who turned around a pitifully non-competitive University of Minnesota's men's basketball team in just two years, talked in his first year as the team's coach about getting what's called a "signature win". Such a game was one in which his team won by performing to its full potential, a performance that people would recall when judging how well the team played that season. Although they didn't get that signature win their first year, Smith's phrase stuck with me.

It takes a lot of resources to make a short term mission trip happen. Not only did it take a great fundraiser and the help of a lot of volunteers, this trip to New Orleans required thirteen people all willing to lay their own agendas aside for a week for the sake of a few families that needed homes. It meant sleeping on prison mattresses, having to wear earplugs to bed, and soggy PB and J sandwiches for a week. It took sacrifice, not just for its own sake, but for the sake of people who could use our help.

And this, I pray, will be our signature experience. Spending our resources (energy, time, and finances) to show people Christ's love is what I hope we think of when we think of UnitedLife. I pray that we as a ministry and church would yearn to see God's kingdom come and His will be done on earth, even if it means making some difficult choices and sacrifices. And I hope that we become a people that don't need a mission trip to be a part of God's mission.