#HeySandy

I had the opportunity this weekend to travel to NYC to aid in the disaster relief efforts that were being coordinated by the New York Dream Center and Hillsong Church. We left on Thursday night and traveled in a van through the night squeezed in between stacks of non-perishable food for those without power, case upon case of bottled water, all kinds of sleeping bags & blankets and our own possessions on top of all that. It was a tad crowded, but the joy we got from knowing we were going to bless people and get our hands dirty serving all weekend, coupled with the rush of adrenaline we had from our theme song mashup,  was no match for a little discomfort. We began our serving partnering with @nycdreamcenter in the projects of Chelsea, Manhattan where all the power was out for days and elderly people and others with small children were seemingly trapped up in thier apartments, some as high as 20 stories high with no heat, no water, and no way to get down due to the pitch black and occasionally puddly stairwells and non-functioning elevators. We packed food bags and brought water bottles up to all the elderly and the families that hadn't been able to get out from their homes yet all day on Friday and then offered them hot food and supplies if they needed them. Check out some footage from the afternoon!

We were incredibly blessed by the attitudes and gratitude and honor of all those around us and I felt God's abundant grace just pouring down on me as my heart and soul were refreshed from service. I used muscles I didn't know I had hauling two 5 gallon buckets full of heavy wet sand a good jaunt to the street to get it out of people's general house vicinity. I talked to people whose homes were half ruined with water, who saw their neighbors go through terrible things right before their eyes in the storm, whose entire house of possessions and years of memories sat piled in a soggy mountain out in street that used to be so quaint in Rockaway, Queens but was now ruined and ransacked and piled 3 feet high with sand from the beach and ocean. And through it all, they smiled. And they lifted each other up and they didn't dwell and they were sleeping with no heat in the same bundled up clothes they'd been wearing for days and they were inviting neighbors into the top level of their home that was still sort of okay to provide a refuge. It was insane. But it was awesome. Check out a video of us working in Rockaway!

http://urbanlifeclt.org/blog/hey-hurricane-sandy/  <-  A wonderfully articulate account of the trip