I started packing tonight for what I expect to be an interesting trip. I’m going with a group of people from my church down to New Orleans for a week. We’re going to work for Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. They’ve got a program called Operation Helping Hands where they gut out houses that were destroyed by the floods caused by Hurricane Katrina. The folks whose homes we’ll work on don’t have insurance and just can’t afford to do this themselves. So the first step is to gut the house by removing all furniture, walls, ceilings, cabinets, floorings, etc, down to the studs. Last spring, our church sent a group of 20 people down there. Now, we’re sending 32. We’ve been planning this for some time, now I just can’t wait to get down there and get to work.

I plan to write about my trip while in New Orleans, and I’ll post all my thoughts here in my blog when I get back. Pat Hopkins is a fellow traveler who’s also keeping a blog. You can read his at www.hopsblog.com.