Pearl River Visit, Labor Day Weekend

August 31 - September 4, 2018

Rod and Brenda drove to Pearl River on Friday, August 31 and were able to catch Elyse and Jordan at home with Darla.

Jordan, Ashleigh and Elyse were gathered at the table with Grandma Brenda doing their studies when Jeff came through in full uniform on his way to ride with the Slidell Police. He does this often on Friday evenings - he goes to pray with the officers as Chaplain, and then gets in a patrol car with one of them.

This gave me the opportunity to get a picture of the whole family, which is hard to do with this busy family.

With Jeff off for his police duties, we took all the ladies out to dinner at the El Paso Mexican Grill .

While we were at the restaurant, Jeff and his partner came by and ate with us. The officer on the left is a Canine officer and showed us his dog and some of the commands it responded to. It turns out that the dog was from the Netherlands and had been trained with that language, so that officer had to learn the commands in Dutch. The other impressive thing he showed us was that when he was on a case and needed the dog, he had a device that would pop open the door of the vehicle and the dog was trained to bound out and find him.

September 1

We got to visit with Ashleigh and Jordan on Saturday morning, but then they were off for a weekend BCM retreat. We think it is neat that Ashleigh from Tulane and Jordan from Loyola participate in a joint Baptist Campus Ministry.

We got to spend a little more time with Elyse. In the afternoon she decided to make a carrot cake, so she got the carrots and started the process. After making it, she created an elaborate carrot decoration for the cake, so it was really elegant. We got to enjoy the cake, but we were impressed by the fact that she and a friend later carried pieces of the cake around the neighborhood to share with neighbors.

Darla fixed a wonderful meal with grilled hamburgers for the evening and we enjoyed visiting with them.

September 2

We joined the family at Northshore Church for worship. Elyse and a friend work with a children's group - the church operates on a work/worship cycle where they work one service and worship in the other. We always enjoy the services and are amazed an how many children are involved in this young congregation.

We had picked up Judy to go to church with us and then all went out to lunch at the Albasha Greek restaurant in the new mall off Fremaux and relaxed for the afternoon.

September 4

We traveled to New Orleans to the Loyola campus to take Jordan back to school. She had been able to be at home for Labor Day, but Ashleigh had to go back to Tulane after the BCM retreat because she was in training for her job as a Resident Advisor.

Since everyone was spooked by the hurricane approaching landfall, we kept a wary eye on these heavy clouds overhanging downtown New Orleans.

As we approached the exit to Claiborne to take us to Loyola, things appeared worse, with dark rainclouds overhanging the Mississippi River.

But as we approached Loyola, things suddenly lightened up. We drove by the Baptist Campus Ministry building because Jordan wanted to leave her guitar there. We got a brief tour and met their Director, Danny Currie. He told us that this building had been in use for this purpose since the 1950s. It is located at 7111 Freret Street and is called NOLABCM, serving both Loyola and Tulane.

The location of 7111 Freret Street shows that it is within easy walking distance from the Loyola Campus, and the Tulane campus is right next to it. So it serves both campuses well. On the map above you can see the Audubon Park right across from both schools, and Jordan tells us that she walks over to the park with her hammock and studies there. They are also within walking distance of the Mississippi River.

This map shows a little more clearly the positions of Loyola and Tulane and their proximity to the BCM.

This is another view of the BCM building. Dannie Currie is the Associate Metro BCM Director, Tulane & Loyola University

We had enjoyed the ride into New Orleans with Jordan. After we dropped her off at her dormitory area, we had decided to head northward to Meridian. The storm was approaching the coast and was supposed to make landfall in the wee hours, and we thought it best to be north of the storm at that point. As we left New Orleans, the sun was still shining, but we could see the clouds building to the east of us.

When we crossed the twin-span bridge over Ponchartrain we were seeing darkening clouds to the east where the rain bands had already reached the coast. On the way up I-59 to Meridian we had a lot of rain as we went through the outer bands.

September 5

As we headed out from Meridian a little after 8am, we encountered the intense rain bands of the storm, even though we were over a hundred miles north of its center. The only time in recollection when I drove through more intense rain was the time a few years back when we drove the opposite direction on this same stretch of road at night when a tornado was close by. I used the same strategy I used then - I camped out about 50yards behind an 18-wheeler with flashing lights and followed him for well over an hour. The intense rain and the foggy vapor it produced almost totally obscured the road.

We were grateful that the storm mostly missed New Orleans, and was probably not as intense in Pearl River as we experienced on the road. Jeff had been on standby with the Slidell Police Department, but the storm did not do much damage there. We were grateful for the trip and being able to see everyone at least briefly.