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Driving through the streets of Chalmette, Louisiana, there is one moment in time that I will never forget: across the garage of one of the flooded homes, the owner (I'm assuming) had spraypainted across the front of his house a rather vulgar if not hilarious phrase: “YOU DIDN'T TAKE MY PRIDE, BITCH. I'LL BE BACK.” There were also other instances of messages of this sort such as the ones that I saw in the 9^th Ward of New Orleans: “For Sale - Not Returning” and “Won't Be Back - Money's Tight - Sorry”.

For the past week, I was down in New Orleans six months after Hurricane Katrina nearly missed the city but came close enough to cause the levies in New Orleans to break and flood most of the city and surrounding area. John Brown University sent a team of students to help with the relief effort. I elected to go on this trip simply for no other reason than that I wanted to go. Months passed, and the time eventually came for us to finally head down to New Orleans to assist the people there. While my hopes were that we would be helping to rebuild the city. Well, we did the exact opposite; we tore it down. Our job was to partially demolish homes by removing everything within the home except for its wooden frame (a process known as mucking or gutting). This gruelling work (which wasn't really so bad) haunts me in my dreams at night as I dream of tearing up houses and carrying the demolished particles out to the curb of the road. Though the work was long and hard, it was rewarding. It was rewarding in and of itself simply because of our good intentions. It was rewarding in other ways because of the gratitude of the homeowners. One homeowner prepared us a dinner of nearly a thousand or so crawfish with sausage and corn-on-the-cob on the side. Another group of homeowners made us fried chicken not for mucking out their houses, but for mucking out the houses of their neighbours. After we had our fill of fried chicken, we stood around a fire in a barrel while a homeowner tossed wood that used to be the floorboards in his own home in order to keep us warm during the cold, Louisiana evening. That probably touched me the most.

Things that I learned from this trip:

• Working in demolition can often make people cough up gypsum and fibreglass each morning and often late into the evening (such as right now).
• The world-famous Café du Monde serves delicious and affordable French Beignets, but their service will have you waiting about an hour just for the waitress to take your order.
• Mountain Dew MDX is in abundant supply in New Orleans among relief camps.
• The largest stockpile of Atkins® Advantage™ energy bars in the United States is located in C. F. Rowley Elementary School in Chalmette, Louisiana.
• Cold showers are an essential part of the missions experience — period!
• Having showering quarters for different genders right next to each other means that certain items of debris can be ejected over a wall into the other quarters. Although tennis balls make great missiles, Mardi Gras beads also work for the purpose, and they add a certain amount of irony to the mix: imagine having Mardi Gras beads thrown blindly over a short wall land perfectly around your neck as you have no clothes on as what once happened.
• I have a crawfish allergy.
• If you try to give a history lesson about why the streets in the French Quarter have three different names (French, Spanish and English), your friends will make fun of you… especially if they're my friends.
• You can go to the city that is world famous for its Cajun cuisine and still find that your mother's jambalaya tastes better.

Sites that I would recommend visiting:

• http://www.hilltoprescue.org/
• http://www.cafedumonde.com/
• http://www.mothersrestaurant.net/
• http://www.frenchquarter.com/

By the way, if you would like a chain of Mardi Gras beads, please ask me. I'll be willing to supply you with a chain to adorn your neck or doorknob or whatever. I have plenty in stock, and no, girls, you do not need to earn them!

Ever just think that you can let yourself relax and not worry about how your life will unfold with regard to that significant other? Thinking that if it's not “meant to be”, God won't have you end up with the wrong person.

Don't.

Fifty-one percent of all marriages end in divorce, and that number is not substantially different when it comes to the Christian community either. My point: take special care in making that decision.