Introduction

I was not supposed to get the e-mail but I did. The e-mail from Theda Hlavka, the leader of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort at Good Shepherd Community Church was addressed to a select group of church members who were interested in helping with Hurricane Katrina aid. Contained in the e-mail was an update concerning the plans of Good Shepherd Community Church to assist with Katrina relief by sending several short term mission teams into the Gulf Coast over the following several weeks. By accident, this update had been sent to the entire church body and that is how I found it in my mailbox on that Saturday morning in September.

“That’s nice.” I thought to myself upon reading the information. “But there is no way that I would be able to go on such a trip.”

It was not that I didn’t care. Like millions of Americans I had watched the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina on television and was genuinely heartbroken by the stories of those who had lost so much in the disaster. However, going on a mission trip would mean taking a week off from work without pay. I was just beginning to get my head above water financially. Did I really want to jeopardize my finances by going off to the Gulf Coast? No. It was settled. I would give as much as I could afford to the effort and keep it in prayer but I would do so from right here in Gresham, Oregon.

But God, it seems, had other plans. As the day wore on, I could not get the thought of going on a Katrina relief team out of my head. A tiny voice inside of me began to whisper, “This might be doable.” At first I tried to ignore the voice but as the day went on, to my excitement and at the same time to my horror, that little voice began to grow more persistent. That evening, when I went to church, I came across the disaster relief table in the lobby and took a flyer relating to the mission teams. As I read that piece of paper, my excitement grew. Could God really be calling me to leave all for a week and minister to the victims of Katrina? As I sat through the service that afternoon my mind raced faster and faster. “Thanksgiving week.” the little voice encouraged me. “Go during the week of Thanksgiving.” I love our services at Good Shepherd. However on this day, I wanted the message to end as soon as possible so that I could get back out to the Katrina relief table. I had to see if a team was indeed going over the week of Thanksgiving, and put my name on the list of people who wanted to go.

There was still one problem though. There was no way that I would be able to afford the 400 dollars that it would cost to buy the plane tickets. After the service, I was talking to Theda about this dilemma when a woman walked up and presented Theda with a check for 400 dollars -- Enough for someone to go. To me this was confirmation. God was calling me down to the Gulf coast. However, one question remained: Would I answer the call?

I stayed up almost all night that night. Unable to sleep, I went for a walk in the chilly night air. During my stroll, I thought of dozens of reasons why I should not go. However, every time I came up with a reason to avoid going on the trip, there came a reassurance. I ended the day by reading Exodus Chapters 3 and 4. What I read there all but settled the question in my mind.
You see, Moses did a lot of great things in his lifetime but chapters 3 and 4 in the book of Exodus tell of one of his not-so-great moments. In these passages, the Lord tells Moses that He has chosen him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Moses comes up with no less than five different arguments why he should not be the one to undertake this monumental task. Ignoring Gods reassurances he scrambles to think of every possible reason why God should pick someone else. Moses argued when he should have obeyed because he was scared of failure and I came to realize that I was coming dangerously close to doing the exact same thing. I fell asleep that night having made a decision: I was going.

In the following weeks, the Lord laid another assignment on my heart. I felt like He wanted me to pay close attention to my surroundings while I was in the disaster zone. He wanted me to come back and tell others what I saw and experienced. That’s where the idea of keeping a journal came from. The writing that you are going to read is a little rough in spots because as much as possible, I kept it like I wrote it in my notebook every night. If you read carefully, you can probably pick up on my fatigue in some of the entries. You may also be able to sense uncertainty at times along with awe, both of the destruction that I saw and of the faith and hope that I found in the people who I met. I cleaned up some sentences so that they would make sense to someone besides myself and moved some sentences around to make the paragraphs flow more smoothly but for the most part, you’re reading what happened in New Orleans and Gulfport Mississippi as I originally wrote it. And so, journey with me back to the early morning hours of Sunday November 20th, 2005, in an airplane somewhere over the Midwestern United states and join me on this adventure. Thanks for reading and enjoy.