"Am I in the 'Right House ?"

These words ring in my ears. Though we heard them only a few times during our visit to the Baptist church, I will not soon forget them. Somehow they fit from the first glimpse through the airplane's window to the tour of New Orleans. Everthing seems so different from my first trip when we came here to swim as children and decades later, a vacation trip with my wife.

The topography was different, but that was due to the whims of nature and somehow it didn't bring a personal hurt with it. What struck me inside was the the difference in the the people.  There were so few...there was so little traffic in the neighborhoods or around the stores or street corners and the broken buildings that no one seemed to be trying to repair. What happened to the city services, staff and equipment that has always been so much a part of community life ?

As the week has progressed, these feelings and questions have faded. Hard work and enough humidity to fog your glasses the moment you walk outside start to melt into an uneven rhythm. Starting a job, finding you don't have all the right tools, and the job is not really defined acturately have become the norm. Complaints don't get voiced because there is no need nor resolution. They disappear when you show up to a house to work and the owner greets you with genuine joy...and gratitude that you are there to help. Even though everyone knows there is so much that needs to be done and so little can be done with hand tools and unskilled labor,everyone smiles and eagerly attackes like oodles and goobs ants at a picnic.. 

 And yeah...at that point ...we are in the "Right House. 

 See you soon, Mike B.