NoLa, #3

Hitch cooked bacon and eggs for the team this morning. It was the perfect complement for the Community Coffee that is served at every locale in he city. This, when we began working on various projects around the church we did so with full bellys. Hitch gave us several projects ideas before joining the rest of the church staff for a planning meeting. He concluded his charge with, "If you run out of things to do just look around and find a project." Needless to say, we stayed busy all day cleaning, organizing, moving, and prepping: 

We moved the pool table and fooseball table to the room we cleaned the day before. It was an ordeal involving wrenches, a quilt, and lots of heavy lifting. 

We cleaned and organized the children's area, tossing lots of trash, sharpening pencils, and removing lots of stray materials and equipment that had accumulated over the past two years. 

We organized the basement where all of the paint and tools are stored. 

We organized and cleaned closets, scraped a wall to remove falling paint & plaster. 

We organized a small closet into a food pantry, moving and assembling shelving, finding, sorting, and organizing donated foodstuffs into the space. 

We moved the art studio from one room to a new, larger space. Tomorrow we will paint the old studio to create a youth Sunday School room. 

Possibly the most fun job was breaking down old pews that a member will turn into a new conference table for the church. 

After all of the work was finished we showered and prepped for an adventurous evening. The fun began with a dinner of jambalaya and freshly baked French bread! After dinner Hitch briefed the team about our evening activities - a prayer walk in the French Quarter. Though we walked through the Quarter the day we arrived, it was during the day and we did not go on Bourbon Street. The prayer walk route, distributed to our team on maps, wove across the most infamous street at intersections, giving a glimpse of the people, businesses, and revelry without leading the team directly through the debauchary. Hitch gave the option for the team to stray from the route it they wanted to walk down the street to experience more of what is there or to abandon the map completely to go to Jackson Square or the river front to pray if walking the route was too difficult. He summed up he presentation with a description of the area as "The Walt Disney World of Sin." 

We boarded the trolley in front of the church and headed downtown. Most of the team had never ridden a streetcar before. We were good tourists and took lots of pictures. After we reached our destination the group decided into two teams, whereupon I gave them a surprise - they would be venturing into the Quarter on their own. I felt they needed to rely on their own faith and on each other instead of looking to me for answers and support. They all had their cell phones. I would only be a few blocks away. After delivering the news that i would meet them at Cafe du Monde when they were finished, I quickly turned and walked away. 

When the two groups later converged at the cafe they were deep in conversation. One group arrived fairly quickly, spending about 45 minutes on the prayer walk. They huddled around their tables, tucking in to Beignets and cafe au lait talking in quiet tones about the evening. The second group arrived much later with more somber expressions. They had stopped midway through their trek to pray in depth about what they were seeing. They took a detour and walked down the middle of Bourbon street. Afterwards they went to the park adjacent to Jackson Square to pray again. I have not talked in detail to any of them about it, they needed time to process. Jennifer told me that it was very, very difficult and that she did not know what to think yet. 

If you have never been to the French Quarter and walked along Rue de Bourbon it will be difficult to sufficiently describe the scene. While Bourbon Street looks much like all of the others in the Quarter, their are fewer stores seeking trinkets, t-shirts, and other tourist junk. In their places are dingy bars open to the street next to colorful joints boasting 24 frozen drinks! the bars are interspersed with glass-front "stores" plastered with huge posters featuring picture-"menus" of the girls that work within. the girls are nude and most are in provocative poses. Music blares from each bar and storefront. Most of the bars and strip clubs are fronted with greasy carnival-barkers calling to passersby to come inside. Many of these barkers taunt and bait the obvious tourists and church groups (usually wearing matching Jesus shirts). And then there are the crowds. Scantily clad party-loving tourists with sun-burned shoulders and faces stumble along the street, plastic commemorative "hurricane" cups in hand, seeking the next adventure. Street performers are scattered along the route, juggling, reading fortunes, playing music for tips. There are the lots of characters in odd attire - solid silver clothing and paint, dancing like a robot - western garb with a huge boa constrictor slithering across his shoulders - black wedding dress with vampire make-up - all posing for pictures with tourists for a fee. Homeless men and women wander down the street hoping to beg some change from drunken revelers. The street assaults the senses. The bright lights, the loud music, the diversity of people types and attire, all combine with the smells of stale beer, wafts of rotting food in the gutters and in and around garbage cans, body odor, and the various colognes of the barkers is overwhelming. 

In the attempt to make money, Bourbon street sells watered down booze and cheap-kinky sex. It is a center of prostitution and sex trafficking. As a result New Orleans is a favored destination for sex tourism. Road-tripping college students, rebellious teens, and wayward business men and woman find after-hour distractions