The Innocent

I am fully recuperated from my week in New Orleans. I have no amazing/sensational stories to share (although others might), but that does not diminish the worth of the trip.
Hundreds of houses were gutted by thousands of college students in the span of a few days. It was good to use the health the Lord has blessed me with to serve those in need

One pervading sentiment was the lack of a feeling of accomplishment as we finished our work each day. Creating something, such as a house takes weeks if not months, but there is a certain level of satisfaction.
After a few hours of destroying the interior of a house, there was no satisfaction. It was tragic to see years of history thrown onto the street. All that remained at each work site was a skeleton of what used to be a home.

We were given mask to protect ourselves from various molds and dust and they worked great (once I learned how to properly put them on). But I have developed something of a cough due the moldy hotel we stayed at. To be fair, the word "bad" was stenciled on the door of our room, but we were eager to find a place to stay, so we ignored the small warning and dumped our stuff in the room. By the end of the first night, 3 of the 8 in our room had sore throats and stuffy noses. The price you may for a free, abandoned hotel room.

I was rather annoyed by the staff of the Grand Palace hotel -- they seemed to be really uptight with fire codes and what not, and didn't appear to know how to run the place, even though it wasn't fully operational. Come to find out, there was no staff at the hotel -- the owner simply told the construction team that was renovating the building to be in charge of things while we were there! And there were a few things that they needed to be up in arms about -- i.e fire extinguisher wars on the second floor (yes, very immature and irresponsible, but I kinda envy those perpertrators), but at the same time, things they perceived as foolish should not be looked down upon.

I have realized that only with Cru (or should I generalize to Christian?) students can you do the most childish things but still fully enjoy yourself. We play in neighborhood playgrounds till midnight. We play "signs," a game in which people sit around in a circle and make various hand gestures. During a fire drill at the hotel, dozens of college students played a game called "Sally Walker" for an hour. The premise of the game? Everyone stands around in a circle, clapping their hands and singing a chant, while one person dances around the inside of the circle until he or she switchs spots with another person. A school yard game that lasted for an hour.

One of the crew at Grand Palace told me we need to grow up real soon before the real world, but I cannot fully agree with that. There is something about these simple games that remind me of Jesus telling us that we need a child-like faith to enter his kingdom. Of course he did not say behave childishly, but there is an innocence in these games and in the joy of my friends that is difficult to find in this world.

I can't speak for every one, but I'd rather be with a group of "sally walker" players than a conference room full of corporate thugs.