Greetings and Thanks

We of Cross and Crown Lutheran Church, Renton, Washington are blessed to be connected to the work of healing, recovery and rebuilding on the Gulf Coast. We return next week, and this space is intended to help everyone to stay connected. We bring greetings not only from congregation members who have supported this work with prayers and contributions but also from many, many others who are supporting this work.

I feel a strong sense of relief as our trip gets closer, and I believe that this is because so much of our work here in Washington has to do with lifting up something that we do not see on television all of the time-namely, that the work and the needs on the Gulf Coast go on and on. twenty-two months seem to an impossibly long time for us to keep our attention on anything, but it isn't much time at all when we are talking about healing after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Once we are on the ground in Mississippi, we will have many things to do and many challenges, but on the Mississippi Gulf Coast I believe that there is general agreement that rebuilding and recovery are still going on- so whatever we're doing, making that point will not be part of our work. Yet- even as I say or think that, I am reminded of things I heard and people I met in New Orleans and Mississippi in February, and I know that it is more complicated.

On this trip, several of us will spend 3-4 days in New Orleans prior to heading for Bethel Lutheran-Biloxi and I imagine that we will much to reflect on, especially in comparing the neighborhoods we see in NOLA and in Mississippi. The picture above left is from the 9th ward in New Orleans in February of this year. We will be working and visiting in the 7th Ward as guests of Pastor Bruce Davenport (pictured above, on the street in front of the church) and the people of St. John #5 Faith. While in Biloxi, we will have a chance to see the changes and progress that have been made on the house on which our people worked last July (shown in the picture at the top, in February 2007, and athen s it was in July of 2006), and then our group work on house in East Biloxi that will have been gutted and in the process of rebuilding, twenty two months after the storms.

Many of us have been to Biloxi before, but I have found each time I have traveled there to work that it is best not to imagine that I know too much or that my prior experiences qualify me to jump to many conclusions. As we travel this time, we will see a lot in the way of progress in rebuilding in Mississippi, and this is yet another phase of this recovery. The healing and recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita don't have any precedent in history, and so going there at this time is like going there for the first time. It is humbling, and it will be overwhelming. Humbling and overwhelming may not be what we look for all of the time, but I believe that service and God's work begin there. - Pastor Glen