The Untold Story

Spending a week in New Orleans can be discouraging. But I also want to point out that it can be very encouraging. It's been almost a year since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. And it's been almost a year since thousands of homes have even been touched. Everywhere you look you see FEMA trailers and blue tarps and empty parking lots. There are abandoned cars, boats and houses sitting where they shouldn't be, and piles of debris everywhere. You see encouragement with signs on stores that say "Now Open" and signs in the yards of homes reading "I Am Coming Home: I am New Orleans." I could tell stories of what we saw there. But I won't.

Driving down the road you experience a host of different thoughts. But what you see you don't forget. And this is what I can't forget: every day, every week groups and groups of volunteers from Christian organizations and churches are making the journey to New Orleans and surrounding areas to help those who have nothing left. I saw their vans, their youth groups, their buses, their signs, their hope. I saw Christians down there for a week taking Christ's commands literally and offering His love through their hard work and through their love.

It is a privilege to be able to offer such a devastated city a hope not only about their restored homes and lives, but hope that a caring God sees them and loves them and cares for them, in the midst of this really difficult, unimaginable situation.

The people in New Orleans and the Gulf region need our prayers and encouragement. They need our hammers and our hands and our help. They need the hope that we have in Christ. And beyond that, the people we live next door to need our hands and our help and to know the hope we have. They need to know someone cares.

Show someone they are valuable today.