In the January of 2006 Terry and I came down to New Orleans with a team from Cornerstone on a mission to gut out houses and share Christ's love with the victims of hurricane Katrina.  We had been married the summer before and had tentative plans to move from Spokane, where I was finishing nursing school, to California to find jobs and start our lives together.  The first day we were in Louisiana we helped gut out the house of a man who lived in Slidell, a small town across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans.  The damage that we saw was unbelievable,  houses completely torn from their foundations leaving only cement stairs leading to nowhere.  The next day we were sent into the city and again were struck by the extensive destruction.  More than the physical damage the city had suffered, Terry and I were impressed by the desolation and air of desertion.  God placed a burden on our hearts to move to New Orleans, get involved at Castle Rock Community Church (an EFCA inner city church), buy a home and invest in the city that so many had deserted and left for lost. 

So, in May of 2006,  2 weeks after I graduated from nursing school, and after selling the majority of our possesions, Terry and I packed up our truck and drove 2,600 miles to Louisiana.  Terry now works for Urban Impact Ministries, the inner city ministry portion of Castle Rock Community Church, as their business administrator.  Until about a month ago I worked for a local hospital as an Intensive Care Nurse.  On September 10th Terry and I welcomed our first child, Evangeline Grace. 

Our time here in New Orleans has challenged us in ways that we did not expect.  Life in New Orleans is stressful; the crime rate is through the roof, the politicians are corrupt and many of the homes in the city, including the majority of those surrounding our own, are abandoned and in severe disrepair.  But we have learned that it is in the most desperate circumstances that God loves to show up, and in this city there is an abundance of desperate circumstances.  Castle Rock is growing and thriving with an ever expanding after school program as well as an alternative high school which reaches out to the youth of the central city.  We look forward with anticipation to our future here, how ever long that may be, and watching God bring hope to the many hopeless of New Orleans.