Picture time!!!April to May

All the YAVs from Little Rock, Asheville, Miami, Atlanta, and New Orleans together for the Southeast YAV retreat.

Andy Thomas, A YAV in Asheville, rocking the hair and beard net.

Courtney leading game night at the Southeast YAV retreat.

Courtney taking a picture of the sunset.

All the YAVs at the Southeast YAV retreat getting to know each other.

Sunday service at the Southeast YAV retreat

Chris, YAV in Little Rock, and Patrick with a cow.

Sunset is a great time to pose for pictures

Patrick, Hillary, and Cherokee with shaving cream on their faces, playing a game at the Southeast YAV retreat

Haley, Courtney, Patrick, Hillary, and Riley selfie

Cherokee, Riley, Hillary, and Patrick on Magazine Street doing some shopping

Hillary doing some shopping. Little does she know that we are buying her birthday gift behind her

There are these little boxes all over the city and you can leave a book in them and take another. This one was stuffed full of books.

After shopping we grabbed lunch at Slice, the best pizza in New Orleans.

The whole krewe getting Snoballs!!! Snoballs are the best!!!

Riley, Haley, Savannah, Patrick and Courtney are the only ones who went today. Free tickets are the best.

That guy could really play the saxophone. It was amazing to listen to.

Courtney rocking out to Gente de Zona at the Congo square stage

Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians playing after Midnite Disturbers

The crowd at Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers from the nose bleeds

Close up of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers. I was glad I was in the back, too many people for me.

Most of my tutoring kids, K-4th. During the graduation we had for them(Funny Picture)

All of my tutoring kids, K-4th. During the graduation we had for them(Nice Picture)

Me and my favorite little kid. He gave me a gift that he made me.

The four little kids that are in my tutoring class.

Four square is the official sport of Midcity Tutoring.

Kimberlyn and Lustein playing rock, paper and scissors after I taught them how to play.

Playing a game of UNO with some of my favorite kids. They won.

Maryka helping the kids with their reading.

The kids had a lot of fun on the water slide!!!

The Older kids (5-7) got a field trip instead of a graduation so we took them to Sector Six.

Cindy trying to cross the pit. I tried it and it’s a lot harder then you would think.

The kids trying to go up and then back down with only their toes.

Maryka showing them how to do this obstacle

Wade hanging on as another kid cheers him on.

Trying to cross the balance beam. It didn’t work.

We have community meetings every Tuesday and Thursday.

Layne comes Tuesday and we talk about community stuff.

The view from the gate at Okra Abbey. The purple semi-circle is called the “Gumbo Pot”

The “Gumbo Pot” and the start of the river.

The shade structure in the middle of the garden a great place to relax and get out of the sun. Okra Abbey has a meal every Wednesday called “Grace and Greens” and people from the neighborhood come and eat lunch and have some great conversation here.

The end of the river feeds into a Labyrinth.

The last bed in the garden and the Okra Abbey bench.

The bench reads: Take a rest, a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

The Layout of Okra Abbey. The Abbey is the work Placement of Haley of the YAVs in New Orleans this year and she has transformed the garden into what its today.

Each of the main garden beds has a mural, painted by a local artist named Lipkis, that depicts a part of the bible. This one is the Garden of Eden.

Going from left to right, Abraham and Issac, Hagar, Noah, Moses, and the Songs of David and Ruth there on the end.

Craig, Hillary’s Scottish boyfriend was in town so we went out on the town.

Cherokee, Haley and Savannah out on Frenchman with Hillary, Craig, and I

The Art Market on Frenchman Street, one of my favorite places to be.

A traveling swing set. Only in New Orleans.

Great music on the corner of Frenchman street

Left to right Dr Green(Cherokee), Ms Peacock(Hillary), Miss Scarlet(Courtney), Professor Plum(Riley), Col. Mustard(Savannah) and Haley as Mrs. White

Went to a great little Mediterranean restaurant all dressed up for CLUE.

Dr. Green and Mrs White getting to know each other as Col. Mustard looks on.

Picture Time!!! August though April

Some of the picture of my Year in New Orleans. I hope you enjoy them.

Yav Group pic — The 2016 – 2017 YAV Family. All the first Year YAVS at orientation at Stony Point New York.

14368730_10153729384971898_3291776970256259927_n — Going to Chick-fil-a after a hard day taking down dry wall and ripping up some floors after the flooding in Baton Rouge

Haley, Hillary and I at St, Johns Cathedral

Haley, Hillary and I at Cafe Du Monde for our first Beignets

Haley, Hillary and I in the French Market

Haley, Hillary and I enjoy the first of many snoballs, a local favorite.

The whole group after our first Sunday worship together

At Feliciana Conference Center. Our First Presbytery Meeting.

Group picture after an hour of roller skating. I fell down a lot.

Riley and I dressed up for Halloween. Sheldon from Big Bang Theory and a Hippie.

Game Night!!!

The cutest couple. Hillary and Craig #togetherforever

Vinnie at the J.W Johnson Community garden showing some kids how to garden.

Getting ready for one of many Mardi Gras parades. Endymion I think?

Some street art I found. It is titled “May the police force be with you”

Courtney telling me to get up and get ready for the parade

Mardi Gras Day two Selfie, I am so glad I got that Blue Boa

Got to set up a few hours early if you want a good spot for the parade

Nyx!!! Hillary, Sarah, and Cherokee enjoying the Nyx Parade

Nyx!!! Hillary, Courtney, and Haley enjoying the Nyx Parade. Look at that pink hair!!!

Nyx!!! Hillary, Courtney, and Haley and Haley’s cousin enjoying the Nyx Parade.

Our setup. Been here two hours, three more till the parade begins

Mardi Gras Selfie. Riley and Patrick and Courtney. Our first parade

Courtney and Patrick at their first parade.

The one week it was cold. We went to see the “Celebration in the Oaks” at City Park. It was beautiful

Our first group picture together. From left to right: Savannah, Haley, Cherokee, our fearless leader Layne, Riley, Patrick, Courtney, and Hillary

A night at Five Guys, Hillary’s first time

Patrick handing out candy at the Midcity Ministries Halloween party.

Patrick reading a book to his kids at tutoring

Patrick helping the kids make bags of food for the homeless

Patrick and his Favorite person, Mrs Jenny, meeting the Famous Leah Chase

Mardi Gras Indians. Everything they wear is hand made and looks so cool

Patrick, Courtney, Savannah, and Hillary going to see the Mardi Gras Indians

Patrick getting ready for the MS Walk the YAVs were doing

Patrick at the MS Walk. Riley said I looked like an escaped convict

The Group after our first crawfish boil. It was so good

The group at The Endymoin Parade during Mardi Gras

Patrick taking a rest during the Muses Parade

Fun with Veggies at our second Presbytery meeting

Hillary, Riley, Patrick, and Courtney waiting for the next parade to start.

Everyone and their Mardi Gras bling after our first parade

Cherokee, Courtney, Hillary, Savannah, and Patrick at a parade on Frenchman

Hillary and Patrick getting Hillary her first Sonic Shake

Patrick enjoying some lunch with Courtney and Savannah at his favorite little place to eat.

Riley, Hillary, Patrick and Savannah enjoying the sunset

The Krewe after a great time playing laser tag on Haley’s Birthday

A Year of Change

My first year as a Young Adult Volunteer has changed me. It has changed the way I view people of color and how I see my own whiteness and privilege. Before this year I was blind and deaf to the struggle that has been going on around me and I feel like I woke up and now I can see the injustice all around the country and I want to fight it. It was lead to relationships with all of my housemates that I hope will last a lifetime. My YAV year has also caused me to grow. I have grown in my knowledge of the problems facing us. Like social justice, world hunger, and human rights. I have learned about myself in ways I couldn’t fathom before this year. When we started talking about the enneagram, a personality test that I highly recommend, I thought it was crazy and that I couldn’t be put into a box like that. A week later I am reading some papers about type Nine personalities and it could have been my life story. I now understand more about myself then I thought I could, like how I shape myself into each group, how I run full speed away from conflict, and many other things. This YAV year has pushed me in so many ways. It has pushed me to sit in the uncomfortable. It has pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone and then just kept going dragging me along behind it. It has pushed me to confront things about myself and my relationships that I would have rather not. But mostly this YAV year has pushed me to grow up. Living with six strangers in a completely new state and having no connections to anyone there is harder then it sounds. I love my community now, but living here in New Orleans has caused me grow up. I now cook, work two jobs, clean, do my own laundry, and I am not responsible to anyone but myself and my housemates. That has pushed me in ways I haven’t been pushed before and it is a good feeling.

The YAV program was everything that I was hoping for when I started looking at mission programs last year, and after actually doing the program I can say that it is was what I was hoping for. I wanted to go to a completely new place and learn about the culture and the people who lived there and I got that. New Orleans in an amazing city with a rich cultural full of life and happiness that is also full of darkness and pain. New Orleans is a city of duality. New Orleans is Mardi Gras, good food, better music, and life. New Orleans is gun violence, mass incarceration, highest homeless ratio in the country, and death. The city and people here have taught me a lot about myself and my faith. I wanted to grow in my faith and my understanding of God and his path for me. I wanted to live in intentional Christian community and see what that was like and though some days are harder than others it has been an incredible time. I want to change more. I want to grow more. I want to be pushed more. I want to go to a new city and explore. Not just explore the city, but explore the people and the culture that makes each place unique. That is why I applied for a second year as a YAV.

That is why I am so thrilled to announce that I am definitely going to be doing a second YAV, Young Adult Volunteer, year!!! I am going to be living and serving in the Big Apple, New York!!! I am so excited for this coming year. I don’t know exactly what I am going to be doing next year, but I am hoping to working with the homeless. I will be living in the Manhattan in the Upper West Side on the border of Harlem and Morning Side Heights. Right now I will be living with two other volunteers, one other guy and one girl, but that is subject to grow as we get closer to September. I will be starting my fundraising soon and I want to thank everyone who donated and Bayside Presbyterian Church for the money that they donated so I could go on this amazing adventure. I will be sending more information out soon about how to donate this year as it will be a little different than last year. I also want to apologize for not keeping up with my blog. It is one of the things I hope to better at as this year continues and to keep it going into next year. I have learned so much this year and I am hoping to learn and grow more in my second YAV year.

A Day in the Life

The beginning of my time in New Orleans has been wonderful!!! From my housemates that I am getting along with, to Frenchman Street where we go to have a little fun, to City Park where it’s nice just to relax with friends, to my work which has been brilliant; I am enjoying what I am doing. I feel that New Orleans has welcomed me with open arms and I am falling in love with it. I have met great people, seen many amazing and powerful things, and had even better food.

One of the places that I am working this year is Lakeview Presbyterian Church. It is an amazing church that has welcomed me into their church family. My main job at Lakeview throughout my year there is as the mission coordinator of LAMP, Lakeview Agape Mission Project, which is a project where mission trip groups come stay at Lakeview and do a wide range of activities around the city. Right now I am in more of a recruitment phase as I get groups to sign up to come in the summer, but as my year gets farther along I will start hosting groups and working with them as they come into the city. I also help out with worship and do other mission-based projects with the church around the city and in the Baton Rouge area. For the last six weeks every Saturday Lakeview, and I with them, have gone around the Baton Rouge area and handed out food to the flood victims. This is just one of the many projects that I am doing along with Lakeview.

The other placement that I am working at is Mid-City Ministries. It is a tutoring program that is run out of a local Church of Christ that tutors 1^st to 4^th graders on Monday and Tuesday and 5^th to 7^th on Wednesday. My average day is that I go to pick up the kids, about 20 on Monday and 13 on Wednesday, we walk back to the church and then go play on the playground that the church owns for about thirty minutes. After we tire them out, we take them inside to have snack and we work on their homework and play educational games till about 5:15 pm when their parents come and pick them up. On Wednesdays with the older kids we join the church for a dinner and bible study until about 8 pm. I am enjoying working here with the kids and I am happy and excited to be helping the kids learn and grow.

I am enjoying my time in New Orleans immensely, and I am excited for the rest of the year. I wish you all the best and go with God.

Peace be with you!

The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

Yav Group pic This is my first time doing anything like a blog so we will see how it goes together. The last few days have been intense—I just got back from our week of YAV orientation and it was a hard week. Not that it didn’t have its upsides because it did. I got to meet all the other first year YAVs. It was great to get to know them and just be with people who are all on this journey with me. It was hard, there were many hard conversations, a lot of hard realizations about myself and the world that we live in. It was hard to be away from my family and friends… it was hard. The first thing that we talked about when we got to the conference center, after about 13 hours of travel by car, plane, and train, was how we were not needed. Not needed. The places that we all are going to this year do not need us. If we all stopped and didn’t go, they would keep chugging along and keep doing the good work that they do so well. We are not needed. Hearing that was shocking—here I am about to go on a year of mission work and I am told we are not needed. If we are not needed, why am I going? The answer: even if I am not needed there, that does not mean that I still shouldn’t go. It was hard to hear that and that was only in the first hour of being there. Over the week we had long, hard talks about racism and sexism and privilege and institutional white privilege and many other hard topics that make you question the why’s and how’s of our country and world. And that was just Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, we went into New York City in small groups and looked around and noticed. We noticed the visible and invisible boundaries throughout the city and that was hard and uncomfortable and that was the point. The point was to make us notice these things and to be uncomfortable in them as we should be. This week was hard and it was good. We laughed and we cried. We learned and we changed. We made bonds that will last a lifetime and we did all of this together as an intentional Christian community that pushes each of us to be better and to look inside and outside of ourselves for growth and change. It was a wonderful week, and I don’t think I will be able to look at things the same and that is important. I am now in New Orleans and all settled in and ready to start. Tomorrow I am meeting my new bosses and will learn exactly what I am doing this year and I can’t wait to get started.

Peace be with you
Patrick Long

First Post

My name is Patrick Long, I am 20 years old, going to be 21 in September 2016. I have recently got my associates degree in business admin from a local community college and am taking a year off to be a part of the young adult volunteer program(YAV) in New Orleans. I leave for New Orleans this August 19th and I can’t wait to get there and start this new chapter of my life. I hope and pray that I am ready for this upcoming year of service and I am ready to get going.