Here We Go..Again

So, if you are reading this, you already know I am on my way back to being “turtled” in New Orleans. (If you are a new reader, I hope you will take some time to read the past trip blogs, especially the “Here We Go” blog from the first trip, and check out the pictures) I have spent a lot of time in the past few days doing more reflecting than anticipating. Just like the last trip, I only have a general idea of what I will be doing when I get to New Orleans, but not a lot of details about what that will look like. I guess because it is hard to think forward, sometimes I find myself looking back, on a few things in particular. It’s funny how much things can change in 3 months. When I went to New Orleans in July, I was really in the midst of a lot of change in my own life and God really used my experiences in New Orleans to remind me what it meant to live purposefully and I was able to really grow in a lot of ways, and am grateful for those of you who allowed yourselves to struggle through some of those things with me. As the result of a lot of what I experienced, I left New Orleans in July feeling really unfinished with whatever I was connected to that city to do. And, here we are...

While I do not necessarily have specific expectations for this trip, I hope it will be equally disorienting, challenging, frustrating, joyful, peaceful, and authentic as the July trip was. Specifically, I will be working with the HIV & AIDS outreach and testing program coordinated by Saint John’s #5 Faith Church. This is the same church that coordinates the children’s camp I worked with during my July trip, and the same HIV/AIDS program I spent a little time with in July. I’ll again be staying with Pastor Bruce and his wife, who were so incredibly open and welcoming during my last trip – sharing their home, their lives, and their stories with me for the week. I am grateful to be spending more time with people who really understand what it means to say “yes” to service, and to be “hope at work” in their community. I am hoping to put some of my social work skills to good use and am hopeful that the things I have been learning in my non-profit management class will allow me to see the program from that dimension as well. I have spent the past few months trying to get ready for this in a lot of different ways, and I am not entirely sure how well I really could prepare myself for the unknown, but I am trusting in God’s power and grace to fill in the gaps.

One of my favorite and most effective ways to share my experience with others and really invite you all in to what happens for me in Louisiana, I like to share stories, songs, pictures, and other multi-media pieces that in some way speak to my experience and provide you with another way to understand it. So, for my first multi-media reference for this trip, I want to invite you to YouTube, iTunes, or otherwise find access to a song called “Change in the Making” by Addison Road. It is a song about how each of us is engaged in the process of becoming who we are supposed to be and how God is using our present to redeem our past. Through the past few months of making a lot of changes in my life and finding my footing again, I have found this song to be a good reminder that “everyday I’m closer to who I’m meant to be” and my last trip to New Orleans was a big part of that, and I am hopeful that this week will continue to change me.

If you are new to the experience of reading my ridiculously long blogs, welcome, and I hope you enjoy. I am grateful for all of the encouragement, prayers, support, and dialogue that each of you brings just by reading this and sharing in my observations, joys, and challenges.