Tuesday July 21st.

Tuesday was mostly a driving day. Many of the kids slept most of the day, or watched movies. I was against them sleeping, because then they get the energy to stay up a night as well. We stopped at a state park for lunch, as we got everything under a picnic shelter, it started to pour. St. Mark is still the rain makers. At least this time the rain didn't do anything but soak many of the kids. By the time the adults ate we had hotdogs, and no buns. We made do, because many of us could skip a meal anyway. I got a call from our Hotel that our credit card was denied (the first of many Hotel agrivations to come). Two or three calls with dawn later we upped our credit limit, and the hotel was happy.

As we got closer to New Orleans, the ground was flat, and we crossed a 25 mile strech of elevated hiway. Along the strech of cannels connected to Lake Ponchatrain ( you can look up the spelling) we saw shacks, small boats and large (19 or 20 foot) fishing boats. It looked as though many people lived on the water year round.

Bertha sent on us on a detour or we would have been at St. Mark in Metreaire earlier, but we finally arrived around 7 pm. We were met by Pastor Todd, a New Orleans native, and proceded to unload the bus. The church was tiny. we speculated on how we would fit 60 people in the available floor space. We had to tell some to not use air matttresses. This caused a bit of a problem, because some were allowed to set theirs up. The kids were a bit grouchy from all the lated nights, so we had a bit of a "domestic" to take care of. After the turf wars were settled, we got an introduction to the area and St. Mark from Pastor Todd.

St. Mark is an elderly congregation, and they worship 30 on a Sunday. They were all real excited to have us stay at the church. The itenerary said St. Paul Lutheran. I think that when Pastor Karn set up the itenerary she left the church name out to be a surprise for the St. Markers. It was a pleseant surprise, because we had a connection with St. Mark just after Katrina. I have some pictures of the church that I will post (probably after we get home). It's a beautiful older church that survived Katrina well. They "only" had around 3 feet of water in this part of the city. This is two or three blocks from where the levy failed. If it had failed on the metriare side of the levy, they would have had several feet of water in the area.

Pastor Todd also told his Katrina story. His house had 4 inches of water in it, but the water was standing for so long the mold grew 4 feet up the side of the walls, and they had to tear everything out for four feet around. He told us that everyone including the children tell stories "before the storm", and after the storm. His 8? yar old son was affected greatly from the storm, and he told us that for many the emotions are still very great and just below the surface. He reminded us to wait for people to offer their Katrina stories, and not ask them directly, because many still can't talk about the storm.

We ate pizza, had our evening devos, and sent em to bed. They were still talking till around 1 am.