Song of the Week 3-31-12

They played this song at the end of the NeedToBreathe concert. It's got a good beat.

Saturday : Endings

Let it be known this will be my last N.O. posting for Spring Break.

We got up and ate breakfast at 9:30. I had a cinnamon roll. It was delicious.

Its hard to think that for spring break we drove for six days, and worked for five. A little silly if you ask me.

The bonding in the car, however, is not silly. I love the team. I LOVE the team. Not in the mushy love sort of way but in the family kind of way. I feel like I can live life with these people.

I forgot to finish this yesterday so ill finish it now. We're currently driving through Iowa and should be home in a few hours.

All I see are fields and wind turbines.

Yesterday we had a good drive from Tennessee to Iowa. We had a rap battle between both vans. The van I was in won! The battle took place outside a Mcdonalds in Iowa City.

After that it wasn't much longer until the hotel. We got there early enough before the pool closed so we just hung out there and chatted. Then we played a game in the lobby until about one in the morning.

I'm still processing what happened in New Orleans. So much information in so little time takes me awhile to process. I'm still thinking of ways to implement what I learned into my community.

The windmills of Iowa are spinning.

I guess as long as there is wind those turbines will keep spinning and as long as there is air in my lungs I will keep living.

But how then shall I live?
What should I do with my time?
Where am I called?

And as we keep traveling down the roads of Iowa so to do I travel down the road of life. What is passed is behind me and the direction ahead is the only thing I control.

Iowa can teach lessons of endings, of beginnings, and everything in-between.

Picture : the Mcdonalds theme in Iowa where the rap battle took place.

Friday : Humbled

On Friday I did the same work that I did on Thursday except for a shorter amount of time.

I did not do much. Most of it was cleaning up for the group next week.

For lunch was gumbo. Basically shrimp and sausage and rice with other miscellaneous ingredients.

I played basketball with some people from the team and smaller kids. That was a lot of fun.

When we got back the team cleaned and packed up and loaded the cars. We then got a tour of the lower ninth ward, the area that you can still see the effect of hurricane Katrina.

It was a humbling experience, one that made me feel very blessed to have the house that I do and live in the location I am in.

Around the lower ninth ward you can see houses with X's on them. This was the marking they made after searching the houses after Katrina. In one corner was the date, another was the organization, another was how many bodies or animals they found. It's a symbol that causes a silence amongst a crowd.

It is interesting, the power behind a symbol after you learn the context.

After that we dropped off the guys that gave us the tour, Jolly and Joe, who I had gotten to know throughout the week.

Then we hit the road.

Then we hit traffic.

Eventually we made it to Memphis, Tennessee. Well, actually a little north of Memphis because I made the mistake of booking the hotel without looking at the specific location.

Then we slept.

I'm writing this on Saturday, so now ill write that on another blog.