Photography: New Orleans

December 19, 2010 — 0 Comments

In 2008 I had the opportunity to lead two groups of students from Belmont University to New Orleans. My first trip was over spring break of my junior year and the second was over fall break of my senior year. The first trip was a fairly small group of students. We spent the entire week working at Musicians’ Village which is a Habitat for Humanity development being built primarily for local musicians. And if you’ve never been to New Orleans, the raw musicianship skills of many of the people there is incredible. Many of the people we met who were, at that time, scheduled to move in soon, had known each other for several decades and were all close friends.

I led a much larger group down over fall break. We again worked in Musicians’ village, but also went out into one of the outer parishes. The community was built around the fishing industry and most of the homes were built around a large inlet fed by Lake Pontchartrain. This area actually survived most of the brunt of Hurricane Katrina, but when Hurricane Rita came through, the storm took a different route that forced several feet of water into the area. The first home we worked on was occupied by an elderly man and his son.  As you can see in some of the pictures in this gallery, we took everything out of the home–nothing was salvaged.

The second house we worked on was occupied by a man, probably in his 60s, who had finished rebuilding from the damage caused by Katrina when Rita came in and flooded his home again. His resiliency against the devastation was incredible. He summarized what I’m sure many people in New Orleans felt: “I might as well rebuild. Everything I have is here. It doesn’t make sense to leave and start all over.” We also worked on a third house owned by an older woman. Everything in her home was also destroyed but there were several personal items that hadn’t been damaged and they were displayed prominently above the waterline in her house.

These photographs were taken during both trips to New Orleans.

These are the posts I wrote during my trips:

New Orleans, First Afternoon
New Orleans Day 2: Job Site
New Orleans Day 3
New Orleans Day 4

In Mission Trips, Photography

Finally some rest

June 30, 2008 — 0 Comments

We’ve been in San Juan since Saturday afternoon staying at the Hampton Inn & Suites.  It’s pretty nice, I’m not gonna lie.  I’ve really enjoyed sleeping in a nice bed and keeping the room freezing cold and having a hot shower and all the other creature comforts I’m used to.  But I’d give it all up again for World Changers in Puerto Rico or anywhere else.  It was hard at first not having those things, but I got used to it after a few days.

We basically went from training at the of May through last Saturday without stopping.  A full month of long days and short nights with lots of work.  It was draining physically, emotionally and spiritually.  By the third project, I had basically given up on caring for the week.  I realized that I wasn’t into the last week and I tried to overcome that, but I just couldn’t get past my funk.  But I made it through the week and I got my work done and the week ended amazingly.  Having a few days off has been very refreshing for all of us.

Today and yesterday we went to Old San Juan.  I was in a bad mood yesterday, but today was much better.  The girls (and Brian) wanted to go in every shop to look at everything, without buying anything, and that really got to me yesterday.  Today we split up and I went with Meg and Courtney and the pace was much easier because they had already seen everything and were shopping for more specific things.  They also let me make some decisions and involved me more than I was yesterday.  Plus I had my camera today so I was taking pictures of everything.  I took 180ish pics today.  Very few of people, mostly of things.  I don’t like taking people pictures; things are much more interesting to me to photograph.

That’s about it for the night.  I’m going to go hang out in the lobby and people watch and read for a little while before going to bed.

In Mission Trips, Ponderings

Exhausted in every way possible

June 22, 2008 — 0 Comments

I’m so tired.  Emotional and physically.  Apparently so much so it took me three tries to write “physically” correctly.  Three weeks in a row of projects is hard.  Especially for me as the a/v.  I have a lot of editing to do for the weekly video and it requires a couple of late nights near the end of the week to get it finalized.  Everyone else has stress at the start of the week, mine is mostly at the end.

Since I don’t think any other summer staff read this and I’m pretty sure my team doesn’t read this, I’m comfortable writing some of this next stuff.  We’ve had our fair share of conflicts in the team.  Some get worked out, some are just moved on from.  Others are just stifled and pushed to the back.  Fortunately for me, I haven’t been directly involved in any of them; I’m just an outside observer.  Which is probably a good thing for me.  I have the tendency to care a conflict too far once I get started, so not having them at all is good for me.  When I sense something brewing, I just find something else to go do.  Crew assignment night is my favorite night to hide somewhere else.  It’s a super stressful night for our OM and PC.  Assignments are made, changed, reversed, redone, etc and it stresses everyone out.

One thing that is weighing pretty heavily on me emotionally isn’t something I can put into words here.  It’s just one of those things that I will continue to keep to myself as I watch things pan out.

I was talking to Meg earlier today (yesterday as of when I’m writing this) about some things our PC has talked to her about.  Apparently I’m impossible to read and “quiet”.  I’m not sure what quiet means, but I think it just means I don’t speak up on major issues.  I guess even after five weeks with my team I’ve yet to be real with any of them.  I wish I could be, but being real–truly real–isn’t something I know how to do.  I’ve taught myself for years to keep a barrier of protection emotionally between myself and people so that I don’t get attached.  It’s part of why I can up and leave without feeling detachment most of the time.  I left for college and barely said goodbye to anyone.  I left for summer staff and barely said goodbye to anyone.  I’ll probably head home after debriefing at the end of July and barely say goodbye to anyone.  It’s a rather tragic flaw in my emotional personality.  Human relationship are too easy for me to break off some times.

Tonight, to be honest, I could use a break.  Not a break with my team, but one away from my team.  I miss hanging out with my roommates and having guy time.  I’m with three girls and a guy that acts like one of them at times.  They’re all great people and I’m extremely glad I’m on a team with them, but there’s no individual time here, at least not for me.  When I do get a few minutes to myself, they’re usually interrupted by someone on my team calling to ask where I am.  Hopefully once we get to the states and have some off time I can be alone.  Even if it’s just being the one to drive out for drinks from Sonic or something.

That’s enough for tonight.  I need to finish some video editing for our Back to NAMB box so I can go to bed.  Tomorrow is another long day out in the sun filming crews.

In Mission Trips, Ponderings

End of the first week

June 14, 2008 — 0 Comments

I finally have some time to write.  It’s been one heck of a week.  We arrived in Puerto Rico Monday of last week and took some time off to be tourists before starting work.  On Saturday our first group arrived and we went to work full steam ahead.  It was a good first week because the numbers were low, so we had time to find our rhythm and figure everything out.

Being on summer staff is a lot different than being at World Changers as just a participant, or even as a crew chief like I was last summer.  The hours are a little longer, but our tasks are less physically demanding than being on a job site.  So in the end I think we are about as tired as the participants.  Watching the progress of five houses go from subfloor to a fully standing structure was pretty incredible.  The houses aren’t big, but turning a pile of lumber into a three bedroom house isn’t an easy task.

I wrote our team blog the other night following the Concert of Prayer, which is when we basically turn off all the lights, put some small lights on stage and play slow music and make everyone cry.  I realize that is the cynical description of it, but in a nut shell, that’s what it is.  At the end of the service, the summer staff had spread out in the room to spend some time praying.  As the local church group finished praying in a group they spread out and surrounded each of us.  They all laid hands on the five of us and prayed individual for our entire team.  Brian, our team leader, is their youth pastor and the only one that speaks Spanish on our team, so he understood them, but the other four of us only understood that they were praying for us and our work here.  It was quite an incredible experience.

On Wednesday afternoon we went to the most amazing beach I’ve seen.  It wasn’t a tourist beach so the only people there were locals fishing, surfing and enjoying the beach.  Once I get my pics up on flickr I’ll post a link to them.  We found a path to another part of the beach around a cliff that opened up to a clear westward view of the sun setting.  That part of the beach was virtually empty when three of us made it over there.  We stayed for a little while just enjoying the absolute beauty of what we were seeing.

Last night I showed my first action cam.  For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s basically a 12-15 minute video of the week.  It covers everything that happens at the job site, around camp and at worship.  This week was a bit tough because there were only 50 something participants here so everyone got a lot of screen time.  I put a lot of hours into it figuring out how to edit video and make it all look good and come together.  The debut last night was successful.  Everyone liked it and I got several good comments about it.  So my time and effort seems to have been worth it.  Hopefully my next video is a bit smoother.

I’m going to try to get pictures and my video uploaded today, and hopefully I’ll be able to write more than twice a week in the future.  I have one more week until my online class starts, then life is going to be really tough for me.  Already no free time to just sit down, now I have to make a video and take a finance class.  It will be good.

In Mission Trips, Ponderings

Puerto Rico update

June 5, 2008 — 0 Comments

Made it to Camp Caribe.  Today is the first time I’ve been able to really get online since getting here and since I have a few free minutes I figured I would put up a post really fast.

We went to a beach yesterday and there was no one else in site as far as we could see.  Then we went to the rainforest where we hiked about a mile in and then swam in the river just above a big waterfall.  Pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.  The water was freezing but it felt great after a couple minutes.

Today we finally started working on office stuff.  I’ve been sorting through our supplies and double checking the inventory to make sure we have everything we need.  I’ve never been surrounded by so many tshirts.

Life is good down here.  The living conditions aren’t the greatest, but they could be much worse, and I’m tired enough at night not to really care.  We haven’t tried much local cuisine yet, although I think we’re going to get some local food tonight for dinner.

Time to go back to counting stuff and organizing it further once it’s all counted.

In Mission Trips
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