Day 6 seemed to be the hardest, or at least bitter sweet. It was sweet because, for me, the promise of seeing my three children that we left behind at home pushed me onward to be at home. It was bitter because we would be leaving the wonderful children, director, staff and the people, sights and smells of New Orleans that had become, in a weird temporary way, home.
Our day was not very busy. We had completed most of the tasks we'd been assigned to do already in the week thanks to the hard work of the teens Pamela, Aaron and I were over. They were troopers! We knew we'd be leaving First Pilgrim after lunch, but this lunch was going to be particularly special. Cedric, the maintenance director, had been a chef for 21 years in the French Quarter and around New Orleans. He explained to us that after Katrina he found so many other talents and gifts that he didn't know he had. He found himself fixing, repairing and doing all types of maintenance work that he had never done before. Necessity breeds invention. Luckily for our crew, however, one of his gifts was cooking. Cedric fixed for us a special lunch of homemade jambalaya, some of the best fried chicken I've ever eaten, with all the fixings. It was out of this world great! We were so thankful for his hospitality!
After lunch, we gathered our things, did some final cleaning and said goodbye to our new found friends of First Pilgrim Summer Day Camp. Having half a day still left before us we wanted to make the most out of our mission, so we headed back down to the French Quarter. We wanted to give out the Gospel to as many people as we could, so we decided that we'd spend another couple of hours walking the streets and trying to hand out the Gospel. This was a whole different experience than handing out the Gospel in the ninth ward. There everyone was uncannily receptive to what we had to give them, even receiving hugs and thank yous from the various people we were able to reach. In the French Quarter, though, we were met with tons of "le resistance". We had more rejection than we had success. Mainly the streets were full of tourists like ourselves. Most were there to party, and we found ourselves in the middle of Pride Week. I will have to say, however, that the locals were easy to pick out from the tourist and they were very warm and receptive to us from my experience. I could walk up to any local and ask them if I could give them something to read and they'd say, "Sure you can," and then have a conversation with them.
We all felt very foolish being out there peddling our fliers, but Aaron Griffin -- our worship leader back home -- was the man. He was the first to admit what we were all feeling, but he said, "I don't care, I'm pushing through this feeling and giving them the Good News." I think that was the spark we all needed, and an awesome reminder that Peter said we "are a peculiar people" (1 Peter 2:9). We're not supposed to fit in to the culture around us because we're no longer living for our selves nor our own purposes. We belong to a new city not built with human hands. It also reminded me that it was God's choosing and His will that mankind wouldn't know Him through human wisdom, but that He would use the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe (1 Corinthians 1:21).
After much foolishness, we planned a stop at Cafe du Monde to fill ourselves with beignets and cafe au lait before leaving this smelly city I now love. We then returned back to our base church for evening service and then a late night 5 hour car ride home. We arrived around 4am to our familiar surroundings of Birmingham/Tuscaloosa, Alabama, crawled into bed and dreamed of jazz music, Jesus and jambalaya.
As a side note, that morning when I awoke, I lumbered into the bathroom ready to take my first warm shower in six-plus days. I stared at the knob in the shower for quite some time before twisting it to the cold position instead of warm, and began washing in the chilly, breath-taking waters of home not yet ready to make the trek back to normal living. In a certain sense, I hope I never do.
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