The New Orleans Project, Day 1

Day 1.

I woke up at 4am. I felt a lot of excitement but also a little nervousness. I wasn’t sure if I packed everything I needed for the trip. Plus I still needed to print out some information. At 4:30am I hit the road. There isn’t much traffic so I am extremely grateful. I call the airline at 6:30am to make sure there are still seats available on the flight we want to take. See, I used Priceline to book the tickets and I picked a flight we couldn’t make. So all week I tried to get seats on a later flight. But Priceline was adamant and wouldn’t allow us to change our flight with the airline. I was a little concerned, but the situation seemed hopeful. The connecting flights had over 20 seats available. The only problem was we had to wait until 3 hours before the flight to reserve the seats. At 8 am I called the airline to book our reservation. Unfortunately, my call was disconnected before I finished paying the $25 to change our flight. I called right back. The agent informed me that there were no other flights available until 6:40pm. In addition, there was no guarantee that we would even make it on the flight. The next two hours were very stressful. I was so scared that we wouldn’t be able to make our flight. I felt horrible because I made such a stupid mistake and everyone would suffer if something didn’t work out. After talking on the phone with many different agents, and hearing ridiculous offers (You can buy first class seats for $2000 each!) and so on, I decided to go to the airport. At this point I was feeling quite desperate and hopeless. Finally I decided to cry out to God in earnest. I asked God to help us get on a flight so we could serve in His name in New Orleans. At 9:30am I found a ticket agent who took pity on me and got the three of us seats on a new flight to New Orleans. I rushed back to pick up my friends and we all returned to the airport. I totally experienced God’s grace, because through it all my friends were very calm and patient. They had such faith that we would find a new flight. God is so good, because the ordeal cost us $75 total.
After some minor setbacks, we finally made it on the flight! We were on our way. We arrived in New Orleans around 10 pm. We picked up the rental car and proceeded to search for the church we would be working and lodging at. Although, we had directions, they were wrong and we kept driving up and down the street trying to find the church. After about an hour and a half we finally locate the church. Then we realize everything is locked up so we can’t figure out how to get in. When we do find someone to help us, and we make our way into the compound, we find that we are woefully underprepared. Two of us didn’t bring sheets and none of us had mattresses or sleeping bags. We decide to stay at a hotel. I am a bit reluctant to go to the hotel because I don’t want to spend that kind of money, but I want us to stay together. So we head out to a hotel that one of the long term volunteers suggest. After driving around for an hour we are unable to get to the hotel. Although we see the hotel, we can’t get on the road which leads to it. We decide to turn around and sleep in the car, at the church. And so ends Day 1. Tune in for day 2, tommorrow.