Collegians on spring break labor for recovery of New Orleans

Collegians on spring break labor for recovery of New Orleans

Nearly 1,900 students spent their spring breaks removing moldy Sheetrock, insulation and flooring from the flood-damaged homes of New Orleans.

The students, many from Baptist Collegiate Ministries across the country, spent their weeklong breaks in March as part of the ongoing rebuilding efforts coordinated by the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board. The students stayed in Camp Algiers, a tent city run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that provides housing, meals, laundry and showers after a hard day at work.

“When you come, you prepare yourself to be in a crisis situation,” Stewart Moody, college minister at First Baptist Church, Statesboro, Ga., said. “You can talk about that in theory and see that on TV, but you get in the midst of it and put faces to it, then it becomes reality.”

New Orleans resident Edward Powell watched the students unload wheelbarrows full of insulation and debris. “It means so much to me. I didn’t have flood insurance, only homeowners,” Powell said while taking a break from pulling weeds, a task that his son said he should not have been doing because of health problems.

Retired teacher Exie Harrison, who had lived in her home for 37 years, said, “I just love the students so much. They are all so sweet and they are working so hard.”

“To see this firsthand, six months after it happened, is more than you can imagine or believe,” said Kyle Johnson from the University of Kentucky in Lexington. “I am just really blessed to have these people let us come in and serve the Lord. Hopefully, we will help them out in a way where they will not see what we are doing, but what God is doing in our lives.”

Page Sigman, a student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, said God was showing her “how temporary life is and how we store up so many treasures on earth that just go away.” She compared the work the students were doing to what God does in people’s lives: “Sometimes God does, or continually does, a mudout of our souls because we have so much filth in there. I realize it takes a lot of cleaning and a lot of work.” (BP)