First week completed

Dear Prayer warriors.

We had an incredible first week and there is so much to tell, but too little time to type it all up. God blessed us and our leaders performed extremely well. On Sunday and Monday our leaders met their youth pastors for the first time, and performed like seasoned mission trip leaders.

We had the usual bumps and bruises that come with so much organization, but all in all our leaders were gracious and we were able to learn and apply a few lessons. We had many miracles that happened and every day we had reports of people coming to know the Lord as their savior. I will share one of the miracles later in this report.

This week sees the first of our mission trips to Long Beach, Mississippi. I went there for three days this week to help prepare for the trip and build some showers for the participants. The gulf coast of Mississippi is still devastated and gets very little media coverage. I stood on the same place where I stood one week after the storm, a place where a thirty foot storm surge hit. The only difference I could see between now and last year, was that the trees had leaves on. I have included some of the pictures on my blog for you to see what it looks like. Pictures don’t really capture the vastness of the damage and destruction. Nothing more than the slab remains of any building that was in the first three to four blocks from the beach. We are staying with a local church in Long beach that has been reduced to two families after the storm, and we are praying that our ministry to the community will dramatically add to their congregation. We are also working with a relief organization called Katrina’s Kitchen in Long Beach. They are a distribution center ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the community.

Last week, we were asked to assist in the churches VBS. During the course of the week we met a six year old boy that had never seen a bible or heard of Jesus. Something that lot of people find so hard to grasp, but proves the point that we as the church in America have a huge mission field right here within our borders.

We got the showers built in 103 degree weather (40 c) and about 90% humidity, which the locals tell us, is only a taste of how hot and humid it gets in August. So I have much to look forward to. The participants arrived on Sunday and I know that the Lord has paved the way for a blessed week of service for each of them.

Back in New Orleans we had multiple examples of God’s hand at work. One of these happened last Thursday.

Most of our work here is removing all the household belongings out of the houses, and then tearing out all the sheetrock and ceilings. Tearing the house down to the bare wooden studs. Most of the houses haven’t been touched since August last year and the black mold is everywhere. Nothing can be salvaged, and understandably, this is a very emotional time for the owners.

One of the teams was gutting out a house and soon found that they were running out of space, they had emptied most of the furniture, but hadn’t started removing any of the sheetrock. The rubble was piled high, covering the whole front yard and a few of the neighbors had started complaining. As concern began to spread, a car drove up and stopped. The driver wanted to know who we were and what we were doing. As the leader shared with him about our ministry and how many people where coming to the city to help this summer, he started to become more and more interested. The leader then proceeded to tell him about the problem of the rubble and that we needed to have it picked up, but that the city wide cleanup teams were far off and we didn’t know when they would be in this area.

Well it so happened that the driver of the car was the director of all the city’s rubble collection teams! He asked when our team would be having a lunch break, and he arranged for the pickup crew to be there, clean the whole site, and be gone by the time our lunch break was over. At 12pm sharp, three trucks drove up and picked up all the rubble, allowing our team to finish the gutting process that same day.

This same director for the city gave us his phone number and told us to call him anytime we needed help from him. The owner of the house and our participants were in awe of the hand of God in orchestrating that “chance” meeting.

There were so many stories of Gods hand at work, but I don’t have the time to write them all down.

This week we have almost three hundred people here working and praying in the city of New Orleans and fifty people in Mississippi. Please keep praying for all of our safety, and for effective ministry. This past week we had a few minor injuries and trips to the hospital, but on the whole we were blessed with God’s protection.

I will be going home to Gainesville this week and bringing the family back with me to spend a few days here in New Orleans.

Some of the prayer items we have are the following:

• Traveling safety for all our team.
• Effective ministry and for people to come to know the Lord
• Endurance and strength for our leadership team.
• Wisdom for the many decisions that need to be made.
• Protection for the participants from the extreme heat and humidity.

Thank you so much for your prayer and support

Please look at my blog on http://atholbarnes.myadventures.org/

God bless you

Athol Barnes