the 9th ward and the people in orange

You’d think that by now I would remember that the trip is going to “happen” to me, too. Yet every school year I work on planning out the details of the trip, we do the fundraisers, I collect forms and forms and forms…and all the while I never remember that I am going to be a participant on the trip, too. And every year something happens that hits me like a ton of bricks when I least expect it. This year is no exception. Truly, many of the experiences were more meaningful to me personally than I would have ever expected. (I’m certain that I had even more fun on this gathering as an adult leader than I did as a high school student.) But the experience that completely took my breath away was on Saturday afternoon when our bus stopped in the 9^th Ward of New Orleans. We stopped at this memorial that was created for the victims of Katrina and Rita and I found myself speechless. (Yes, every once in awhile I don’t have something to say.) It was so difficult to stand in a place where we know so many people lost their lives. As I looked at the memorial and looked down the neighborhood streets, the only words that could come out of my mouth were to gather those around me to uplift the people of the 9^th Ward in prayer. What a powerful moment as we stood on this sacred ground and joined hands in prayer.

You may have noticed that on the day that gathering participants did service work we all wore matching orange t-shirts. This means that on any given day of the gathering you could spot 12,000 people wearing orange t-shirts and serving around New Orleans. It didn’t take long for the people of New Orleans to know who the people in orange were (the Lutherans) and what they were doing (God’s Work, Our Hands). As we stood outside at the memorial in the 9^th Ward, cars and cars and cars of people honked their horns and waved as they drove past us. They were saying thank you to the people in orange and acknowledging what we were doing. Pretty powerful.

Miss Alberta, the woman that owned the plantation that we did our service work on, told a story of those people in orange. She told us of how she was out in the city and some people asked her, “Who are those people in orange?” Miss Alberta’s response was, “Oh, I know who those people in orange are. They are our angels.”