Campus Crusade for Christ's Recovery Efforts in New Orleans, LA
The first thing I noticed driving across I-10 over Lake Ponchartrain was the temporary bridge segments. Whole sections of the interstate now lay under the brackish waters of Lake Ponchartrain. Leaving the bridge I entered East New Orleans. The first thing that caught my eye was a car lot. All of the cars were covered in mud. Apparently, every car in at the dealership was submerged and waiting to be junked. We passed a Home Depot with a large security fence completely surrounding the building. No one was getting in or out of that building. Whole apartment complexes were vacant with debris littering the grounds. The place was a ghost town. It was very eerie.
We drove on into the city. I saw a billboard for Billy and Franklin Graham. They were in town for a “Celebration of Hope.” Over 30,000 people came to hear the Grahams present the Gospel and over 1300 people indicated a decision to trust Christ! Hope, indeed, for a city running on empty.
We drove on to the 9th ward. This was the area hardest hit by the flooding. As we exited the interstate, I began to see a brown water line on every house. It stood somewhere between 8 and 10 feet tall. This is the level at which the water sat for 3 weeks. It was so different from our time in Mississippi. There, every house was just blown away. There were only piles of debris where houses once stood. Here in New Orleans, all the house were intact, simply flooded and empty. Businesses, homes, churches, everything was empty. We crossed the canal into the lower 9th ward and the destruction only intensified. The only vehicles on the street were FEMA law enforcement. There were no residents to be seen. You could look down streets and only see junk strewn about. Rancid refrigerators that had been untouched for 6 months lined the street and polluted the air. Everything has been left undisturbed, covered in mud and black mold.
Our home for the week was Camp Hope. It is a tent city in the City Park, housing 1000 college students from all across the US. Our UK group shared a circus tent with a Campus Crusade group from Chico State (northern CA). It was at Camp Hope that I began to meet some of the residents of New Orleans.

Jack is a retired Marine. His family has lived in New Orleans for 150 years. He moved into his house 50 years ago, when he was only 10. When he returned to his home, it was completely destroyed. His family’s photos, chronicling 150 years of history in New Orleans, were gone. Everything he owned was destroyed. But Jack was brought to tears when he told me about two of his beloved cats that drowned. Jack is unsure of what the future holds, but he is confident that his city will rebound. I asked Jack why he has such hope. He told me to look around. College students from across the country are coming to rebuild his home. Jack said that his city was in bad shape before the storm. He had hope that things were going to be made new.
The word “hope” continually popped up in my conversations with the residents. I saw how hope in anything of this world was futile. Levees failed. Homes failed. People failed. Governments failed. It seems as if everything failed. It seems to be a hopeless situation. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Hope in Christ will never fail. We can gut a house, but it is merely a cosmetic change. Christ came not to remodel our lives but to completely rebuild. God is at work in New Orleans. Through the destruction and death, the body of Christ is at work rebuilding more than homes. Christ is on the move and changing lives in New Orleans.