News and Events
EU MISSIONS TEAM HELPS REBUILD NEW ORLEANS
St. Davids, PA, February 5, 2010: From January 1-9, five Eastern University students traveled to New Orleans, LA, to serve the community through missions work. The group stayed at and worked with Berean Bible Church and consisted of the following students: Amy Fischer, Julia Peiffer, Kristina Kraft, Krystal Cairns and Rebekah Miller. The trip advisor, Jonathan Beasley, has served as a librarian at Eastern University for the past 25 years.
"This was a wonderful trip and the students fully put themselves into serving," Beasley said. "We wanted to do our little bit to help in the ongoing recovery of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina. The time we spent down there and the work we did was, for us, a way to demonstrate God's love for New Orleans. Our hope is that the people we encountered saw, through us, God's care and provision for them and their city."
This trip was Beasley's fourth time to accompany a group of Eastern students to work in New Orleans since Katrina. Past groups have worked with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, Habitat for Humanity, and Berean Bible Church, and have done of variety of jobs including working on houses damaged by the hurricane, building a new house, working at a charter school, and participating in Berean's ministry to street people in the French Quarter.
This year, the group worked on two houses, participated again in the street people ministry, and did organizational work for a new church Berean is starting in another part of the city that was especially devastated by the hurricane.
Peiffer, a senior at Eastern University, served as one of the trip's co-leaders. The elementary education major from Stratford, NJ, felt that the trip to New Orleans was important for the Eastern students and people of New Orleans alike. "The homeless people of New Orleans very rarely have people come and interact with them, so just by being there we were really able show them God's love," Peiffer said. "It also opened our eyes to see firsthand that focusing on the homeless and what we need to do for the less fortunate across the country is really important. As we continue to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina, we need to keep our focus on not only the homes that are being built, but also help the people adjust to their new lives."
Additionally, this year's team was able to return to see some of the houses that past groups worked on. "The houses are now occupied," Beasley said. "It was a great thing to see the fruits of the labor of the past groups, especially for those students in our group and myself who went on previous trips and worked on these houses."
For more information about missions trips, visit Eastern University's Office of Faith and Practice:
