Greetings fellow Fed Ex'ers I'm just now returning from vacation and thought I would tell you guys a little about the experiences we had this week. My wife and I left home at around 6 am last Sunday morning with a group of volunteers from St. Paul Lutheran Church here in Jackson MO. Our destination? Camp Restore in New Orleans LA. Camp Restore is a disaster relief organization run by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. I came very close to backing out of the trip because "who wants to spend a week of precious vacation time working my butt off for a bunch of folks I don't know and who won't help themselves". Well six hundred miles later we arrived at camp and I began to realize that maybe I was wrong about not wanting to go. The camp is in a restored Lutheran church and school that had taken major damage during hurricane Katrina. All the work done at the church had been done by volunteers who donated time and money to get the project started. One of the cooks who volunteers at the camp lost every thing she and her family had in the storm and it took them 5 months to get back home. When they did finally get to start rebuilding they gave $35,000 to a contractor who worked about a week on their home and then disappeared with the rest of the money. If it had not been for volunteers from Camp restore stepping in to help she would not have a home now. Another man I met down at a local store had the names of three people he lost in the storm tattooed on his arms in remembrance. He said if it were not for the people coming down to help he did not know if he would have been able to go on with life. The city is still mostly a ghost town except for certain neighborhoods and the down town "tourist" areas. I had several older ladies hug and tell me that we were angels for having come in to help when no one else would. The stories of loss and heart ache down there really brought to light how petty my own problems are and how easy my life is compared to some of those people still living in FEMA trailers this long after the storm. Rent for a house that wouldn't be livable up here is going for outrageous amount and there are still no homes for more than 60% of the populous down there. God must surely have had a hand in my going down there and I hope that I once more will get to go. I encourage you guys to check out Camp Restore and get your churches involved in it. Our government tends to help people all over the world except here in the states. If we don't help the folks down there, who will? Gods Blessing, Randy