This mission trip to NOLA isn't like anything I've experienced before. We aren't feeding the hungry or clothing the poor or even visiting the widows and orphans.
While there is poverty and homelessness all around us, we are partnering with a missional church to reach out to an overlooked population... one that is just as poor, and maybe even more so... but their poverty is spiritual and not physical.
In the neighborhood where we are ministering, the population is only 1 % Christian and the fields are ripe for.... planting.
Some sow, others water but it's God who brings the increase... We are the sowers, sowing seeds of love and the gospel to a community that mixes voodoo with philosophy and where individualism is celebrated yet community ties run deep.
A major hub in the neighborhood is a community center owned by a voodoo priestess, where the demonic forces of voodoo are dressed up in sparkling statues that look intriguing to the undiscerning eye. But greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. And He loves those caught up in the deception of this city as much as He loves those of us He called to reach them.
It's in the midst of this hub that our host church holds their services, bringing The Light into the spiritual darkness And it's into this neighborhood that their members have moved to from other states to 'do life' with their neighbors.
It's been an honor to come alongside them and reach out to their neighbors by cleaning storm drains and starting conversations with people passing by and by going into coffee shops looking for people to lead into gospel conversations.