New Orleans 1--Homelessness and Poverty Day 4

As Ben Franklin put it, "well done is better than well said." This trip, we've had so many opportunities to do great work, with little time for words in-between.

We started off the day with bold beginnings (some quick coffee!) and then it was straight to the food bank to unbox giant palates of food products, send them along a conveyor belt, and sort them into other boxes to be sent out to food pantries. The bank was Second Harvest, and we had a really great time! We moved more than five thousand pounds of food in hundreds of boxes for the organization. We met a lot of really great people, and some of them will actually be at the food pantry where we're volunteering tomorrow.

We also went to do more work on the houses that we started with the St. Bernard Project. We got so much done! On one of the houses, we finished painting five rooms and sanding and prepping several more for further work. We talked more with the owner of the house and she was so grateful for what we were doing. "It's like Christmas every day you all come to volunteer," she said. The second group did some "mudding" and hung out with Alex, their awesome site supervisor! They got a huge amount done on their house and they can hardly wait to see how the building progresses in the future as we can check on the St. Bernard Project website for updates!

During the evening we enjoyed a hearty dinner at "The Velvet Cactus" but here's the catch - we didn't have time to go home to change first. So yes, we sat at the restaurant completely covered in paint and mud. People seemed to know that we had been volunteering... wonder where they got that idea! Dustin ate a huge plate of nachos which was very impressive. He says it was actually five pounds. Then (after a nice shower of course) we all went and enjoyed some great jazz music downtown. It was a great deal of fun but we were also very tired!

Tomorrow we look forward to working at a food distributor called "Love in Action Outreach" which should be a pretty full day for us.
Wishing the very best,

NO 1