Getting hit on all sides (Hurricane Ida)

My life flipped upside down overnight. Like an exodus adventure, me and my roommate of 2 years joined the caravan flippantly evacuating from a category 4 hurricane ironically named ‘work’ or Ida. When we hastily packed up our cars and moved things out of potential flood spots in our two-story apartment and my music camp studio, we never thought we’d return a week later to mold, rust, no doors, broken glass, wet instruments and speakers, soggy carpet, ants in our pantry, and no roof…not only did our place of rest look like a ‘crack house’ as someone who came in to help salvage said, but our entire city looks like a bomb went off. There is no power still in areas along our coast and bayous. I found out today water was just turned on in the city my brother has been 'roughing it' in. I am thankful for that. Clean water, as I am all too familiar with in third-world nations, is essential.

Two days ago, I saw my cousin’s boat flipped over in his yard, I saw my parent's church building destroyed and left to the elements, I heard of people getting in fistfights over gasoline, I waited in traffic for hours as I was making a normal 20-minute trip. I saw hopelessness and helping hands.

I had originally signed up 15 families for my upcoming September music school- so long to that. Now I have families who have offered their spare bedrooms to me and I’m naturally making music at their acoustic pianos.

At a powerful church service, this past Sunday running on a generator and with desperate hearts, one of my voice students and I reunited with only tears and the simple statements to reassure one another: “we still have our voice”. How ironic since I just wrote about how other things tried to steal that very thing. This time I want with strength, vision, and a voice to share what is going on for my people. My insights and my story are one among hundreds if not thousands in my region, displaced, grateful to be alive, but unsure of what lay ahead. Welcome to the world of an evacuee, turned refugee...

Today, I am back in West Monroe. I visited here after playing at a local music show at the end of August, evacuated here for Ida last week, and now returned here yesterday as a refugee. I may record a 4 song EP in Shreveport soon of original songs I wrote while in that place I once called home, so there are blessings on this broken road. But, I am not teaching music now. I am finishing my bachelor’s degree. In a month I can earn that degree and take a few certifications to be a licensed teacher in Louisiana. I am not leaving her while she is down. Quite the opposite. I went get vision by going back home the other day, and I see that my land has become a mission field. My people have become like me, in need of help.

Oddly enough, I consider it a blessing to be in the same ‘boat’ as many of my neighbors and childhood friends, humbled to be homeless.

Now, though friends and family have offered their spare bedrooms, the goal is to make it back down the bayou (to my region) more permanently, in a month. Until then, I am creating as I go.

I am fundraising now to be able to pick back up the pieces of my life so I can move forward and well. Consider donating as anything helps so I can have supplies to live off of now, recover necessary items for living, make trips to visit family still displaced, return to my hometown to help with recovery efforts, mobilize helping hands, and deliver necessary supplies for those I know lost even more than me when I do travel back down. As of now, FEMA and insurance are of little assistance to me unfortunately.

(below: my venmo or PayPal; before and after pics of my place, salvaging shenanigans, leaving my family again, handing out chick-fil-a to neighbors working on their roofs, spreading the word door to door about tarp and food distributions, working with friends at my brother’s without electricity or water…you know normal life stuff)

Or

Consider coming. Though I cannot specifically host anyone, I have a network of people in my region that are partnering with local churches and various organizations to bring disaster relief. Though the news channels may have moved on already, this blow and storm will leave its mark and the road to recovery will be long for my city and surrounding towns.

Bourg, Chauvin, Houma, Montegut community needs:

hot meals, grocery runs, electrolytes

baby sitters, kids entertainment/ schooling

laundry help

man power (gut houses, deep clean, salvage) (debris and yard cleanup) (moving men)

Trucks and trailers to haul supplies (wagons to pick up yard debris)

a listening ear, hug, prayer

licensed contractors, repairman, roofing &experienced demolish crew

solar powered chargers, gasoline for generators

The schools I had once lined up to substitute teach even this month, have been destroyed.

Things are changing in my city as it rebuilds and the needs will change how I work, and what I do in this season for work. Pray with me as I only have things set up for this final month of school, after that, I am unsure: where will I live, how will I work, how long will I jump from couch to couch, how long should I stay away from the region, when should I return, when will I see my mom and niece and nephews? Will me and Janea live together again or go our 'separate ways'? Will the insurance cover though they say they don’t cover ‘named storms’?

I do not have the answer to most of these questions and trust me, the adrenaline rush of feeling like everything built was destroyed has kept me sleepless some nights, but I do not want to partner with fear. I have trusted God to protect and provide for me on the mission field, and this is no different. The difference is I am somewhere in the middle. Though I lost a lot, I did not lose all. Though I still have, I do not have all I need. The mission field came to me and yet I am also in need of receiving a mission to help me get back on my feet. I do not have a home but now get the opportunity to live in many homes, to be impacted, and to impact them.

I write this out because I know many people can relate to what I am going through, yet they are saving face and keeping their feet moving.

While I move, I want to also let you in on the journey, because I have always tried to do that with my life. This life's devastation and opportunity are no different. Come and see what God can do with someone willing and scared.

My head is* spinning with my life being rocked, while simultaneously I am feeling like the anchor for my soul still stands intact. I am stoked for the upcoming season of adventure and open doors but I feel like I have to be tough for my neighbor.

I don't want to try to be tough, I just want to be.

I want to let you in on the raw so you can feel permission to be raw too.

We all at times feel out of place, like refugees.

The more we get in touch with those feelings, whether or not we have a physical address to our name, the sooner we can truly love others and relate to them with authentic compassion.

Feel this blow with me, but then offer your hand, your shoulder, your wisdom, your ear, your dollar, your couch, your comfort, to me and to my neighbors and I will try to do the same, while broken-its called ministering in misery, and at one time in all of our lives we will be stuck in the middle too, at the mercy of life's storms and blows, but we are not alone.

God has got us friend; we are loved and though all are in need, we all have something we can give too. Just take one step and do the next right thing, whatever that may be, big or small, it matters.

PS. If you have already supported me in any way in the past related to missions or this upcoming chapter, thank you. You encourage me to keep going, to keep loving, no matter what gives. Like my home without a roof, my life has no ceiling...I wonder with expectation what is at the horizon of a life lived in total surrender and authenticity like this, or rather no plan B and no real plan-I believe whatever lie ahead, my life will be one of truly knowing what it means to love and to be loved.

Below, videos I captured while DOWN THE BAYOU.