I spent my first night in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. I don’t think I can put down in words what I experienced. Everything I thought I knew about the celebration and the city was wrong or misguided. I honestly don’t know what I expected, but I definately wasn’t ready for it. I saw the people dancing in the streets, I saw the girls showing everything to the guys, I saw the alcohol and the drugs, and the homeless. I saw everything I expected to see. What I didn’t expect were the young people. I didn’t expect to see high school students and younger there. I thought this was a college and adult party. I saw girls that couldn’t have been more than sixteen so drunk they couldn’t walk getting swept into clubs with guys twice their age and older. Completely incapable of denfending themselves. I saw dudes sitting in a puddle of their own vommit not know where they were or how to get home.We helped a man like that get a cab last night. We tried to tell the cabbie where his home was. I pray the guy made it. It’s in God’s hands. I saw the look on some teenage guys as they got their first real taste of excess, of lust, and of “fun”. Some of them had no idea what they had got themselves into.

Here’s the worst part- I didn’t know how to help. There was so much going on; so many people moving, breathing, sinning that the whole city moved. It’s loud and it’s ugly. You get caught in a whirlwind and all you can do is watch. Several of us guys just sat around and cried at the end of the night. Watching people partying on one side of the block and freezing and starving on the other side. And you’re powerless. All we can do is pray for and serve whoever we can and let God be in control which he is anyway.

If you read this pray for New Orleans most importantly and for us secondly. Pray that God would show us how to serve and that we would have the passion for God to carry out his commands.

God bless,
Adam