GOOD NEWS

MY DAD IS ALIVE!

I haven't talked to him yet, but he is on the phone with my brother in VA as I type. All I know is that his house took in about twelve feet of water in less than an hour and that he was rescued by a helicopter. I'll post more details after I talk to him.

Thank you all so much for your prayers. You have no idea how much they mean to me.

Are you all okay?

We want to make sure that we can communicate back and forth as a church body during this time of crisis. So, we created a blog: bereannola.blogspot.com. If you are from our church, be sure to visit there so that we can all connect. Thanks!

By the way, thanks to all who called today. It was nice to hear from concerned friends and family. Your support means a TON to me.

Oh, and I still haven't heard from my Dad. Keep him in your prayers.

What is waiting for us in New Orleans?

I am pretty emotionally spent. I have spent most of the day either in front of the television, on the net or on my cell phone. Needless to say, the question that has been weighing heavily on my mind is what is waiting for us back in New Orleans?

From what I can piece together, the Westbank is the only major residential area in the entire metropolitan area that has not been hit hard by flooding. I am about 99% certain that our home did not experience any flooding. BUT, it is very possible that we have wind damage. There are two large trees in our yard. If either tree falls on our house...we are in serious trouble.

All of my family, though, does not live on the Westbank. I am pretty certain that my Mom, my Dad, my grandmother and much of my extended family has water in their houses.

I am really worried about my Dad. As I said in a previous post, I am pretty certain that he did not evacuate. In fact, he is the only person that I know personally that didn't evacuate. Anyway, I have tried to contact him to no avail. (It seems that all phone coverage, cell and land lines, are out.) He lives in Gentilly. It is very possible that he has 5+ feet of water in his house. Please keep him in your prayers. I just wanna know that he, his wife and his mother-in-law are safe.

I'm sure that many New Orleanians share my feelings right now. I just wanna go home. I want to find out how bad it is and start to deal with it. It sounds, though, like we won't be allowed to go home until Thursday or Friday at the earliest. Even then, we might not have power for weeks. Those factors make me wanna put my wife and kids on a plane to her parents' in Pennsylvania. We'll see. It is way to early to make any decisions like that.

waiting and praying...

It's a little after midnight, and Hurricane Katrina is a couple of hours away from landfall. I don't know how much sleep I'll get tonight. It's interesting how you find yourself responding to extreme situations like this. I find myself wanting the storm to just hurry up and do it's damage so that I can get back home to deal with the aftermath. I'm tired of the "what if"s. I'm ready to deal with reality, no matter how bad it is.

Crystal and I have tried to think through worst case scenarios. I guess it is possible that we won't be in our "home" (whatever that means) for weeks. If this is as bad as it could be, Crystal and the boys might fly to Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks while I go to New Orleans to figure things out. It is interesting to think through what life could look like for us for the next couple of months. My job is to help people in New Orleans, right? I am more than willing to throw myself into helping out in any way I can over the next couple of months...or years. Who knows what good God can bring out of tragedy? If we want a chance as a church to truly impact our community...could that mean that we play a role in putting our community back together?

Please keep my Dad in your prayers. I talked to him around six o'clock this evening and he was in fact still in New Orleans. It sounds like he was most probably going to ride out the hurricane at home. I'm sure that thousands of New Orleanians have made similar choices. Please, God, keep them safe.

I'm off to try to get some sleep. Who knows what kind of new world will greet us tomorrow morning?

this is surreal

We woke up this morning to news that Hurricane Katrina is now a category-5 storm with 175 mph winds. Mayor Ray Nagin has called for a mandatory evacuation of the city of New Orleans for the first time in the history of the city. In his press conference he said, "our levee system most likely won't hold." Basically that means about 15-25 feet of water in the city. Now, I know that they are trying their best to scare people into evacuating...but this could be it.

It's so crazy, we had no time to even think about it. Normally we have days and days to think about a storm, how to respond, what to pack, etc. It is now hitting me that my house could really be gone. We didn't have time to think through what momentos to take. It sounds like many New Orleanians were in the same boat as us. I had lots of friends who still hadn't evacuated as of last night. Everything moved so fast...they didn't know what to do. I'm so thankful that we could pick up and leave, knowing that Jeremy and Christa would take us.

I have no clue if my Dad is still in town. The phone lines are overloaded and it is nearly impossible to contact him.

I keep thinking of the Old Testament prophets, knowing that God will judge the people of Israel and pleading for God to show mercy. God, spare our city.

Hurricane Katrina

Greetings from Birmingham. Crystal and I evacuated this afternoon (Saturday) with no problems. We didn't board up our windows or anything, but we did make sure that nothing is loose outside. This is crazy. It is the first time that I have driven away from my house and thought, "Next time I see this place, it could be devastated." I mean, I've lived in New Orleans for almost my entire life...I have never been this concerned about a storm.

So keep New Orleans in your prayers. This very possibly could be the worst storm to hit the city in sixty years. From what I can tell, a lot of people are choosing to just stay home. My Dad and step-Mom are still at home...as well as lots of good friends. The mayor is hoping to call a mandatory evacuation in the morning. That will be the first mandatory evacuation in the history of New Orleans. Yeah, this storm could be that bad.

That is enough apocalyptic talk. On to the good stuff. So we are staying with our good friends Jeremy and Christa. We are looking forward to hanging out with them. It has already been great catching up. Hopefully we can see some of our other Birmingham friends while we are here.

We did have one crazy mishap along the way...we noticed some wobbling, stopped and found a huge chunk of rubber missing from one of the tires. Apparently we caught it just in time. I think we would of had a blowout if we had driven another ten miles. Anyway, we stopped at a gas station in Mississippi and got a new tire.

So if you want to know what is going on in New Orleans, then check out WWL's website (the local CBS affiliate). On their website, they actually have a live feed of their TV coverage. Here is the direct link.

How in the world did I get educated?

As many of you know, I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the public school system in New Orleans. While I am more than willing to admit that the school system has a lot of serious problems, there are some schools that are bright spots and should make us proud. I attended Jean Gordon (K-6th grade), McMain (7-8th grade) and Ben Franklin (9th-12th grade). I am proud to be associated with all three of these schools. The teachers that I had were great people. They cared deeply about their jobs, their students and about education.

Today I am ashamed. I am ashamed to call myself a New Orleanian and ashamed of my school system. If you haven't seen it yet, surf over to the Times-Picayune website and check out this article. This is sad. It hurts me that so-called teachers and educators are willing to trample on our children in order to fill their pockets. Let me say, also, that I don't include Kathy Riedlinger (principal at Lusher) in this group. Although the article lumps her name with the others, she has operated above-board and has done so much for our school system. The article does explain her situation. (The parents at Lusher have donated money out of their own pockets as an added bonus to her salary as a way to thank her. She is not receiving unwarranted money from the school board.).

Anyway, I just had to post this. This article left me speechless. I hope that we can work together as New Orleanians to make our schools better rather than running away from the problem. I am fully aware of how fortunate I was to be able to attend the public schools that I attended. Not every kid in New Orleans has the advantages I had. A vast majority are at the mercy of whatever is their district school. I long for the day when every kid in New Orleans gets the chance to get the kind of education that I had.

The 2006 Ocoee Trip

Just wanted to let you all know that I have finalized a couple of key details for our 2006 summer trip. We will be spending a week in Ocoee, TN where we will be hiking, whitewater rafting, rock climbing and team building. It should be challenging and exhilerating!

Mark your calendars. The dates for the trip will be July 24-30, 2006 (that is a Monday through a Sunday). We will be staying at Copperhill Country Cabins. Unfortunately, I was unable to book with the same company where we stayed in 2003. Copperhill is a smaller company that owns 8 acres of land and only four cabins. We are going to have the entire place to ourselves. Surf over to their website and check it out.

my sweet new ride

I know, I know, you all have been mourning the loss of Smokey, my van. Well, take off your sackclothes, my friends, 'cause I bring you good news and glad tidings...

I proudly present to you my new vehicle:


It is a 1997 Jeep Cherokee. It has 110,000 miles, an empty hole where the radio is supposed to be, and a bent back bumper. And yes, folks, your eyes aren't deceiving you, the front quarter panel is a different shade of white. They tell me that is because it was replaced. I like to think of it as the accent of some great, anonymous automotive artist...the pure white representing what Christ has done for us.

Yeah, I know. You are jealous. It's okay. Many probably echo your feelings. I just ask that you remember God's command concerning not coveting your neighbor's wife (or his cool jeep).

I am currently accepting submissions for a name for my new ride.

Ship Island this Sat

School has started...are you ready for a break yet? Yeah, I thought so.

We are going to Ship Island this weekend so that we can pretend like it's still summertime and that we don't have any homework. Here is the details:

• We'll meet at church at 6:30am. We will take the 9:00am ferry ride. We will probably return around 7:00pm.
• Bring a swimsuit (no bikinis please), a change of clothes (they have a bathhouse), sunscreen, a bag lunch, some $ for dinner on the way home and anything appropriate for the beach (a frisbee, raft, football, etc.)
• The trip costs $20 (for the ferry that takes us to the island).

Let me know if you have any questions. We will have a sign-up sheet at youth group Wed night.

September is gonna be a good month for new CDs...in addition to the new Switchfoot CD, my fav worship band, David Crowder Band, is releasing their new CD, A Collision. The first single is entitled, "Here is our King." It is an awesome song that we have sung in youth group once or twice. You can hear it on their myspace page. Check it out.

Mission Mexico 2005

I figured I should post a couple of pics from the Mission Trip for all of you wonderful peoples. All pictures are courtesy of the amazing Dana. So here you go:


We stayed at a Red Roof Inn in Laredo on the way to Mexico. It was a great last night in the US. We ate hamburgers at Fuddruckers that night. It was a fitting "last supper" before we crossed the border. I was very pleased to find an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game at the restaurant. That is only the best arcade game ever!!



Driving in Mexico is pretty darn crazy. It's basically like driving in a big city like New Orleans...that is driving in New Orleans with mountains and on steroids. All traffic laws are suggestions. This is a great pic that Dana took of Brock while he was driving. I'm sure he was looking for me, since his van was always in the lead and my van took up the rear.



Roadstops in Mexico were pretty similar to the US. Your gas stations would have all of the normal candy bars, soft drinks, cappuchino machines and packaged pasteries. Everyone would pull out their pecos and practice their Spanish on the poor, unsuspecting cashier.



We arrived at the camp in the early Tuesday evening. We found the camp to be way more developed than we had expected. They had four one-room cabins built. We occupied two of them...one for the girls and one for the guys. They only had a limited number of bunkbeds, so we put them all in the guy's cabin. There just wasn't enough space in the room to put all of the guys on the floor. We all slept on those foam pads that you see in the pictures. They were pretty comfortable. One issue was the climate. It was really cold!!



As for the projects...two of the main ones were succo work on the exterior of the four cabins (it had been started by a previous group but not finished) and fixing the foundation of one of the cabins. As you can see from the first picture, our girls did most of the succo work. The second picture gives you a little idea of the foundation work. The long and short of it is that three of the four cabin walls were laying on cinder blocks instead of the edge of the concrete foundation. We had to raise those walls one at a time, remove the cinder blocks, build forms and pour concrete to extend the foundation to the edge of the walls. Does that make sense?




Another big project was to build retaining walls around the front corner of two of the cabins. As you can kinda see from these pictures, these cabins are built on an incline. When it rains, water was flowing right into the cabins. So, the walls we built are meant to direct the water away from the cabins. As you can tell, we did a lot of digging (the first two pictures), then forming and framing the walls (third picture) and you can see the final product (last picture).



My favorite outing of the trip was the hike at Bernal. Bernal is one of the largest rocks in the world. You can see it in the first picture. Basically it is a mountain that is one, big rock. It was an extremely difficult hike to the top. I don't know if we all would have made it if it weren't for all of the encouragement that was flowing through the group. The second picture is the view from the top.

Here is a picture of the group that made it to the top:




Another outing we took was to visit the city of Queretaro. Queretaro was about an hour drive from the camp. It is a city of about a million people (about the size of New Orleans). We went there to sightsee and shop. We were really impressed. It was beautiful, historic and clean.

So that was our trip...at least a couple of highlights. It was an amazing trip for each of us that went. God truly changed us through the experience.

Is it time to hang up the Mavs hat?

Yesterday was a sad day in Dougland. I've been a big Mavs fan ever since I lived in Dallas. My favorite NBA player, hands down, has been none other than Michael Finley.

Last night Fin was released by the Mavs. Here is an article on ESPN about the frontrunners in the race to sign him. Gosh, I hope it's not Miami. I just don't think I could ever cheer for Shaq. I wish there was some way that the Hornets could sign him...

Calvin the Bass Player Extraordinaire

The most famous Connection Youth Group alumni, Calvin Turner, currently plays bass for Marc Broussard. (Yeah, that's right. I just decided that Calvin gets that award.) Calvin is featured pretty prominently in Marc's new video, Home. If you wanna see Calvin jamming on his bass and dancing in a rocking chair, check out the video here.

Oh, and here is the disclaimer: the writer of this blog nor all associated organizations do not necessarily endorse all of the content of the above said video.

We're back

It is Wednesday afternoon and I am back in my office for the first time since we arrived home late Sunday night. Mexico was an amazing experience. God did so many things while we were there. First of all, we had no major problems or injuries. We all made it back safe and sound. Secondly, we got a ton of work done! Finally, God worked in our lives as individuals and as a group.

As for the projects, we...

• fixed the foundation of a cabin.
• built two concrete retaining walls that will prevent water from entering cabins.
• succeed the exterior of, oh I don't know, 3 full cabins?
• began the process of rewiring all four existing cabins.
• secured a swing-set in place.
• put up fence posts around the swing-set (although we weren't able to put the fence itself up)
• put up posts for the dogs to be chained to.
• put curtains in all four cabins.
• cleaned up the entire camp on the first day and again on the last day.

Most of these projects were not super expensive. So much of our funds went to tools. We purchased:

• Eight shovels
• Two pick-axes
• Two wheel-barrows
• A rotary hammer (I think that is the name...it's like a jackhammer)
• Two sets of alan wrenches.
• A couple of random wrenches.
• A bunch of other tools that I either can't remember or don't even know about.

So, anyway, I post more about the trip in the coming days.

Oh, and one other thing, we do have youth group tonight (Wed, Aug 10). I hope to see you all there.