Dear Friends from Mt. Pulaski days,

 

We're sending greetings electronically to all of you in the Mt. Pulaski area for whom we have e-mail addresses.  If we were still there we know that we would be enjoying working with the church and school preparing for the celebration of our Savior's birthday.  Your faces, the hymn singing at the beginning of the worship services, the children practicing, the preschoolers acting out the Christmas story with puppets, the Advent candles and other church decorations all flash before our eyes as we recall the many happy years there. 

 

This year we are entering the Advent season in a much different fashion. After the joy of visiting Mom Droegemueller, all of our siblings, most of our nieces and nephews, a number of cousins, and our children and grandchildren, we have settled in New Orleans.  Worship and preparation for Christmas goes on here, too, but in a much different fashion.  We live at a Lutheran Disaster Response Volunteer camp in our Sportsmobile and every day we go out on assignment to throw out all of a family's wet, smelly, household goods, tear off sheet rock, shovel out the muck or sludge that still covers the floors in thousands of homes, pull up soggy, moldy flooring and carpeting, and move or save anything possible, while we listen to the homeowners tell their stories and weep for their losses.  Many churches are just beginning to reopen, are still being worked on, or will have to be destroyed.  Meanwhile local residents and volunteers of all ages and from all over gather together to thank God for the blessings of life and forgiveness through Jesus.  Among the blessings for which they are thankful are the gifts sent through various relief efforts from fellow Christians like you.

 

The news stories and our own imagination did not prepare us for the sights and smells where miles and miles of homes and businesses have no power, water, roofs, or walls, where cars and boats rest on rooftops, where homes that weren't properly anchored have floated for a block till they hit another building, where certain areas have still not been opened for residents to view their former homes, and where the only thing in shopping center parking lots are trailers and construction trucks.  Deconstruction and reconstruction will be going on for years as residents make decisions as to their future homes and occupations.  Volunteers generally stay about a week, but some of us are more long term.  For instance, we have a cook who brought down his portable kitchen and barbecue trailer from Arkansas and feeds us great breakfasts and suppers, before we have devotions together and fall into very sound sleep. 

 

I'll include a few pictures of the way the entire city looks.  The first one shows a room that has to be mucked out.  The black mud was about 6 inches deep, but has shrunk a little as it has begun to dry out.  The second picture shows the piles of household goods, sheet rock, and carpet, that line the streets. The city is constantly scooping up these piles and carrying them off, but the next day there's always a fresh supply as the work continues.  The last picture shows a fish that tried to escape the tennis court fence, after the water had gone down below fence level.

 

We remember you all with love and pray for a joyful and Christ-filled Christmas and New Year.   Pastor Paul and Wilma