Youth Outreach to New Orleans

 

Following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Winterset’s First Baptist Church pulled together their humanitarian aid ministry volunteers and began taking teams south to help. As the need in Louisiana continued, FBC’s high school youth group, led by youth pastor Jerry Tipton, loaded up their vans to join in the church’s effort to help out wherever they might be needed. For the past two years, these local kids have taken a week out of their summers and used up their spring breaks helping families rebuild and recover from the mess Katrina left behind. With yet another summer trip planned for 2007, Pastor Jerry invited Winterset Community Church’s youth pastor, Jay Bock and WCC’s youth to join them. Pastor Jay jumped at the chance.

 

“Last winter Jerry mentioned that if we were interested in going on a mission trip, they’d love to have us along. I took that to heart and we started working out the details. We’re youth pastors in the same town, concerned about the same group of individuals—there’s no reason why we can’t work together,” thought Pastor Bock.

 

On June 3^rd, 14 students along with enough sponsors to equal out to about 20 total, packed up three vans and headed south. The teens pitched in for gas money and their meals on the drive there and back. Although three flat tires slowed them down, two days later the group reached their New Orleans destination and settled in at Vieux Carre Baptist Church. As thanks for helping out the folks in their community, Vieux Carre set up a dormitory for mission crews, providing room and board in appreciation of their guests’ hard work.

 

And the students certainly worked hard. Pastor Jay was amazed at just how devastated many areas looked two years after Hurricane Katrina wore itself out over the historic city.

 

“People that I talked to that did live there were adamant that this was their home, and this is where they lived, and the place that they loved,” shared Pastor Bock.

 

Supporting the sense of rebuilding, the Iowa group focused on one home, abandoned by its owners when mud and water left a foot of sludge inside its walls.

 

“The main project we did was on a house that really hadn’t been touched since the flood—cleaning all the mud out, all the drywall out, all the insulation out, all the ceilings and all the furniture that was left in there—down to the concrete slabs in the floor and the studs in the walls. Everything else went out to the curb,” recounted Pastor Jay.

 

“The water line was 12 or 14 feet high,” described youth trip participant Josh Jobe. Pictures showed the mountain of garbage that the teens cleared from the space. Tractors were required to scoop the rubble into large trash bins to remove it from the lawn it all but buried. In addition to gutting the otherwise pleasant brick home, the youth groups tried their hand at reconstruction by helping a local church with some tiling, mudding, putting up a ceiling, and building a shed.

 

Each evening after cleaning themselves up and eating a much-appreciated meal cooked by Pastor Jerry’s wife Jamie, the students and youth leaders set out for Jackson Square. Here they got a chance to visit with the people of New Orleans. The students and youth leaders brought along guitars, a harmonica, and a conga drum and sang praise songs in the square.

 

“Musical stuff and artsy stuff really goes well in that Louisiana French Quarter area,” explained the youth pastor. “It was really exciting to talk to people and meet people, to be a bright spot on Jackson Square—there’s a lot of sin and squalor that goes on there.”

 

To spark deeper conversations, the Iowa crew set up a seven-foot wooden cross with the thought-provoking question, “What is Love?”

 

“Some people would write something very Christian, ‘Jesus is love,’ other people would write their spouse’s name or ‘selflessness’ or ‘putting others first’—a number of responses—and sometimes those responses would open up into a conversation,” explained Pastor Jay.

 

Speaking of selflessness, one of the lessons the youth pastors hoped would come from the team trip was the importance of working together and taking the focus off of oneself to help others.

 

“The whole goal of doing the work is to practice being selfless. Selflessness has a sense of being meaningful. On the other hand, selfishness—which is something that we practice quite often in our day-to-day lives—oftentimes ends up being meaningless. To go down there and have a practical experience of not thinking of yourself and being selfless—is a pretty good experience. The other thing is just living in Christian community together, and taking care of each other, and putting others before yourself—when you live like that for a week, it rubs off on you.”

 

Pastor Jay was excited to be part of WCC’s first youth mission trip and even more so that it partnered with another local church.

 

“I think working together is a great thing to do. It’s good for us, it’s good for the church, and it’s good for the Christian community.” FBC and WCC’s youth returned June 10^th and look forward to another opportunity to do missions work together.

(Published in the Winterset Madisonian 07/04/2007)