Please take a minute to read this--please!

Spending the last week and anticipating the next week that we from Trinity Lutheran Seminary are spending in Louisiana and Mississippi has been a terrific--and a horrendous experience. It has been terrific in that we, as a group, have bonded, worked well together, and learned much together. The horrendous side of the coin is the indescribable devestation that we have witnessed. There are no words to describe blocks upon blocks of flooded and destroyed homes, the marks on the houses indicating the number of dead found there and the faces of the people whose entire lives are now a memory.

Imagine a house--a beautiful house--which had been bought and furnished by a twenty-six year old man six months before Hurricane Katrina. The inside of this house is completely destroyed--furniture, clothing, appliances, carpets, dishes, pictures--all gone. This man talked to us as we were clearing out the house--clearing it out to the bare studs. His grief was palpable as he described his loss, his feelings, and his grief. In front of his house among more than 140 feet of what had been his--a line of rubbish that was eight feet deep. He looked at it and briefly picked up a baseball glove. He looked and looked and it and with tears in his eyes said, "It still smells the same." I asked him if he meant the odor of mold and mildew but he replied that it still smelled of leather. I suggested that he keep the glove but he laid it down and said, "That was in another life."

This type of grief overwhelms the very soul. Please pray for Brett.

Blessings, Mary Molnar