Return to the Gulf Coast

This week has been a time of vacation, rest and relaxation, and a return to the Gulf Coast. This has been our first trip down here in three years. In August of 2007, we packed up from internship and returned to Columbia for our last year of seminary. We have not had the opportunity to return since.

Today, a friend at St. Paul's (our internship congregation) was ordained and we were invited. It was a good opportunity for us to come back, visit with old friends, and join with the members of St. Paul's in celebrating the ordination of Joy Blaylock. It was a wonderful time and we really enjoyed the opportunity to visit.

On another note, we did something that we were not able to do the entire year that we were here for internship, nor while we were here the year before that as volunteers - we drove across the Hwy 90 bridge between Biloxi and Ocean Springs! If you were to look back at our internship blog and some of the first pictures we posted, you would see that the Hwy 90 bridge looked like a game of dominoes gone wrong. When we left here three years ago, they were still arguing over what kind of bridge to build as a replacement (4 lanes, 6 lanes, with pedestrian traffic, without, etc). Today we drove over a brand new 6 lane bridge, with pedestrain and bike lane. It was a wonderful experience! Much has happened on the Gulf Coast in the area of Katrina recovery, especially noticable to people like us who spent a lot of time being involved in the recover efforts.

Tomorrow we head home. It has been a wonderful trip down memory lane, a new chapter in our lives and our relationship with those that we knew when we were interns, and a reuniting with friends - some old and some new. It has been good to see so much recovery, and sad to hear of situations that did not turn out so well. It was especailly sad to hear of the death of members of St. Paul's who were a part of our intership, but this is life. We will miss those people, but we remember their part in our intership. Special thanks to Garry and Brenda for hosting us, and to Joy for inviting us to be a part of her special day. Praise to God for all good things!!!