First Sunday in Kenner

Last night we woke up around 2 am to the sounds of an emergency vehicle and fire truck. They stopped right outside our window and made a lot of noise, talking over their radio and idling. Well... we hope this not a regular occurrence. Luckily they moved on after about 15 min and we were able to get back to sleep. We woke early again at 6 because of the time shift. We are now 2 hours out of sync from last week in Ontario, one hour in daylight savings time and one hour in time zone difference. Anyway, it gave us some time to walk around here. We are about a mile from the Mississippi river where we walked to. It was very nice. The weather is absolutely beautiful. No clouds and the temperature around 22 deg C. We attended church right here where we're staying, the First United Methodist church of Kenner. Unfortunately, this church is suffering from loosing a lot of its members after hurricane Katrina. They very much appreciate the work we're doing here. Also, it helps them survive since CRWRC is paying for the use of their facilities. Our whole group of 19 people made up a goodly part of the attendees. It's good to get together with different Christians though and we felt a real connection with the people here. We celebrated the Lord's Supper with them as well.

We know we're in the south not only because of the warm temperatures but also because of the palm trees and grapefruit and orange trees.

This is another day to get to know each each other and to sort out our jobs for tomorrow. We all visited the sites where we'll be working tomorrow. There are 3 work sites. I will be helping putting up vinyl siding and Annie is on another site doing drywall finishing (taping and mudding). It appears that we have a great group of people here. We having people from Canada (Ontario), Michigan, Massachusetts and California. It is also amazing how we can find connections. One couple for instance are Lawrence and Boukje De Raaf. Their son is a minister, Kevin De Raaf in Burlington Faith CRC. Lawrence and Boukje used to be members of the Ottawa church where Annie's brother Jack used to be a minister. So they know Jack very well. Also, Jack has been a mentor to Kevin De Raaf. This is just an example of how we connect with each other.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. We'll get up at around 6 o'clock to get ready. We should be on the job site by about 9 we hope. The traffic here in New Orleans is horrific, very busy and terrible drivers. Oh well at least we don't have to drive ourselves.