Yowsers!!

I really love the word yowsers. It has nothing to do with this post, I just wanted to make that the title because I think it is fun. :)

Well this week has been a pretty busy one. The youth group from my home church in Florida are here so I have been busy doing various service projects with them around the city. It has been great to be able to become more educated about this new city that I am living in. On the other hand though, it pains my heart to see the amount of poverty and unjustice. Yesterday a group of boys that we had met at a racial reconcilation training on Saturday took us on a tour around New Orleans showing us examples of intitutionalize racicism.

One thing that makes New Orleans different from the other cities I have lived in is how close the different "classes" live together. You can be in a really bad, run down housing project and then across the street you are in the Garden District with multi-million dollar homes. I have found that in other cities I have lived in their is great distance between the two. It is so strange to be in one neighborhood that is predominantly black and then cross the street and be in a neighborhood that if a black person was walking down the street they would most likely be stopped by a cop and asked where they are going. It is just so messed up and it frustrates me to death. It frustrates me that when I go to a party at a house in the Garden District the only black people I see are in the kitchen, I just feel like yelling, where are we in the 1800s?!!!!?!!!! All of it is messed up.

Our whole culture is messed up like that, that the rich and poor are so seperated and the different races are so seperated. I just hate it. But how can it be fixed? I was blessed to meet people this weekend that are trying to fix it through education and prayer. The more I think about it prayer is the only thing. Prayer that God will soften people's hearts, heal wounds, open people minds, bring strong Godly leaders who are not corrupted by power, educate people, and more.

What do you think? What it is like in the city that you are living in?

On another note I just had to add another picture of my niece. She gives me hope...

Its so hot here!!

Well I have not been very good at keeping up with my posts over the past few weeks. I think it is a mixture of reasons but mainly for some reason I just have not felt like it. But today I am feeling ready to type again.

Things have been going ok lately. The past couple of days I have been in a I dont want to be here sort of mood, which I get in every few days. I feel guilty for feeling that way for so many reasons, mainly that I am letting down the kids I am here for by saying that and it makes me start questioning my call here and my call to youth ministry and that has a number of other setbacks. But mostly I feel that when I say it I limit God and His reasons, that I am still trying to figure out, that He sent me here and placed me in the this church.

I still even struggle with being in and working for the Episcopal church (this could be a whole other, super long blog). Yes I trust and love my boss, and his boss seems pretty solid, but there are times when I ponder whether to stay in this church or whether just to say I am sick of this church (for so many reasons) and just move on to another denomination. But I need to keep remebering that yes the Episcopal church pays me but it is not my boss, God is. I am here to work for God and to allow Him to minister to the youth here through me, an idea which is super scary to me.

People keep telling me that I just need to be patient and that God will reveal His reasons for bringing me here over time and as I grow in my ministry, and I actually keep telling that to myself as well. I keep finding myself wishing that time will go by quicker but then I catch myself and remeber that God does not want me to live my life hoping and wishing for time to fly by.

But for today, this is how I am feeling. I pray that tomorrow will be different and i will be excited to be here. But this is today. I just pray that I will be able to give this fear and doubt to God and be able to live each day fully, looking for what He wants to teach and show me each day, instead of wishing each day quickly by.

On another note, it is so super hot here. The past few days have been 94 or so with a heat index of 106. Then when you throw in a bunch of humidity, man talk about a sweat fest.

My beautiful niece Emerson Elizabeth Euziere

Go away hurricane!!

Well the city of New Orleans, as well as many other cities, are in a state of waiting as we see where Hurricane Dennis is going to go next. It is currenlty smashing Cuba, I keep finding myself thinking about Cuba and how it manages with hurricanes. I feel that though many homes can be damaged in the US by hurricanes, I am sure that far more are damaged and destroyed in Cuba. I get frustrated with US news for many, many reasons (reason I will not get into right now) but one of the biggest is that I dont feel that they cover the world news very good.

I find myself thinking that Cuba is getting smashed right now, but are we going to hear much about the pain and suffering they are going through, probably not because tomorrow we will be so sidetracked as to where it will go next. So I guess my point to all of this is that I think the US forgets so much about how much worse people have it than us, but then again our news does not help remind us of that either. As I am sure this hurricane is destorying the slums of Cuba right now more than it will possibly destroy our homes. I am reminded of how Haiti was smashed by a hurricane last year and left devistated, but have we heard anything about that since. Where are they now? How are they doing? How can we help? The same for the tsunami, it was covered for a good couple weeks after but where are they now? What is going on there?

This is a lot of thoughts out at once, and there is a huge discussion and debate that could go on about this, but I am just blogging my current thoughts.

Another current thought, I am having another hard day of missing friends and a good community.

So that is today. Waiting to see where a storm goes, internally debating my and America's ignorance, and missing friends and family.

Storms, storms, and more storms

Wow it is funny to be back in the south and back in the path of things such as tropical storms and hurricanes. We just got hit by a tropical storms last night which has left much of the city without power and a lot of trees down (many of them with cars under them). Praise God that my house did not even lose power. Both my roommates had a window panel blown out but other than that we are ok. I think if I had a panel blown out of my window in the middle of the night, I would need a new pair of sheets, but my roomies are braver than I.

One thing that I love about big storms, besides just the sheer powerful force of them and the fact that God creates that force, is that usually the day after they come, the sky is clear and beautiful as it is today. The storm has brought a little break from the New Orleans heat and even humidity, I was just able to eat Indian food outside and not break a sweat. AMAZING!!!!

Now I hear that we are in the path of Hurricane Dennis (the name of my 4th grade boyfriend ha,ha), but who knows where that guy will be in a few days, I pray somewhere off at sea where it can not hurt anyone.

So it is so funny to live in different areas of the country and experience natural weather extremes. Up north we worried about blizzards and the south we worry about hurricanes. I have just been blessed to live in solid homes where the blizzard and hurricanes have not hurt me.

Well off to see if the coffee shop we were supposed to have a youth group meeting at tonight, has power.