The past three days have been very, very full days for us.  It has been a challenge to even find a spare moment of time for sleep let alone to write a blog post detailing what is going on here in New Orleans.  But tonight I’ve got some time (although again, not much) so I thought I’d share a bit about what has been going on.

This is the first gathering of such a size the city of New Orleans has hosted since Hurricane Katrina and in some ways it is a bit obvious.  Things that would have worked  a bit more smoothly 12 years ago when the city last hosted this very gathering are now a bit kinky.  But the major issues that we’ve had as a group have had less to do with whether the city of New Orleans is ready for us and more to do with the actual Gathering participants.

The streets are crowded!  There are at least 36,000 people walking the streets to and from the Superdome for our nightly Mass Gatherings.  And while we are all coming from different hotels in slightly different areas, it gets a bit oppressive especially up at the Dome.  In response to this, people are crowding each other, pushing and shoving, and disobeying traffic laws.  It’s a bit chaotic.

But, things are still good and we’re learning and growing a lot.  We’ve spent time in the Interaction Center which provides all sorts of opportunities for learning (including Justice Town where our group learned about human trafficking among other things) as well as fun and games (did you see the pictures of the bumper cars from day two?).

Today though we spent time at a Catholic Charities building cleaning it up so that it can open as housing for homeless and battered women and children.  We did a lot of different things around the buildings, everything from packing up a food-pantry to move from one building to another to sweeping to washing windows and painting.  It was incredible to see the ways in which God is at work in our kids and the other groups who were there.

I will hopefully write about the Mass Gatherings and the speakers/bands we encounter there each night.  But that will have to wait for another time because I am in need of some sleep before another full day tomorrow.

In the meantime, enjoy some pictures from today.

Jesus, Justice, Jazz - Day Three

Pastor Kate