Sunday afternoon on C-Span, NBC anchor Brian Williams told a crowd in Boston’s JFK Presidential Library, “There are many scars on America. Birmingham, Selma, 9-11, and the latest one–the city I’ve always considered the most interesting of all American cities–New Orleans, Louisiana.”

A sociologist at Houston’s Rice University conducted a study and found that 3 out of 4 Houstonians believe the 150,000 evacuees from Louisiana have put a great strain on the city and are responsible for a huge increase in the crime rate. I expect both of those are true. John Culberson, U.S. Congressman from Houston, was quoted in Sunday’s paper: “I think the percentage of people unhappy with the deadbeats from New Orleans would be larger but for the big hearts of Houstonians who want these folks to get back on their feet, as I do.”

I’m not sure we want to analyze Mr. Culberson’s statement too closely. We love you, we want you to do well, you’re a bunch of deadbeats.

Another Texas congressman, Jeb Hensarling, came to New Orleans recently with other House members invited by the Women of the Storm, in order to expose leaders to the real situation down here, as opposed to what they hear from other sources. Hensarling did not want to be confused with the facts, so he left a meeting of business and civic leaders before they could present their plans on the recovery of this area. In Congress he lambasted the citizens of this area as being lazy do-nothings who wait around for the federal government to solve all their problems. It was either Hensarling, or perhaps Senator Bob Bennett–want to be careful here and not target the wrong person–who slammed the local citizens for not carrying flood insurance even though they live beneath sea level.

A nationwide study has revealed that 67 percent of the citizens of New Orleans carried flood insurance, a figure higher than any other flood-prone coastal area in America, with the exception of the Coral Gables, Florida, community where the percentage is 68. The politician’s putdown was either slander or ignorance. Take your pick.

Local politics down to their usual standard? Last October, the head of a salvage company (K & L Auto Crushers of Tyler, TX) offered to the mayor of New Orleans that he would haul off all the abandoned & flooded vehicles littering the streets, and pay the city $100 per car. At the time, there were 50,000 cars on the streets, in driveways, and under the interstates. A good deal by anyone’s standards. You’re not going to believe what is happening.

The mayor is signing a deal with a company to haul off those cars, and paying them up to $1,000 per car for doing so. The contract is said to be $23 million. The city says FEMA will reimburse this money. Some who bid on this project are crying foul, saying the city chose the company with the highest bid. The mayor came back with something about the amount of money not being the main criteria, and that they will negotiate the dollar figure down. Again, the other bidders are asking what was the whole point of secret bids if the winner gets to change his numbers.

As wicked as this is, it gets worse. After the local paper blew the whistle on this shenanigan, the company announced it was withdrawing from the deal. That was the lead story in all the nightly news. Then, next day, they say they were misquoted and they’re back in it.

If our friends in other cities and states shake their heads at goings-on in New Orleans, no one more than some of us. Another case in point.

We have this judge down here. Charles Elloie of the N.O. Criminal Court. The police will arrest some bad guy and bring him before a judge who sets bail at $20,000 or something. Before the cops finish their paperwork, the crook’s lawyer has called Judge Elloie who issues an order that all bail be dropped and the bad guy hits the streets again. It has happened time and again. The State Supreme Court reprimanded him for this behavior last year, but apparently he doesn’t learn. This week might have been the last straw.

Brian Expose is a felon who was caught with 6 ounces of cocaine, two assault rifles, a Tec-9 with a silencer, four pistols, and $189,000 in cash. He was arraigned and bail was set. While police are still counting Expose’s money, a lawyer or someone–Elloie won’t say who–called and asked him to throw out the bail figure. Elloie says the caller did not give him all the facts, but just said Expose was arrested in possession of a firearm and possession with intent to distribute crack. So, on that phone call, he turned the bad guy loose.

When the newspaper blew the whistle on this judge and published the complete list of charges against the bad guy, Elloie said he did not know all the things the cops had on Expose. Why didn’t he check? “I’m not going to leave a guy rotting in prison while we’re checking these things,” he said, to the utter amazement of the population of this city. Elloie justifies his leniency by saying, “We already have enough people behind bars.”

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Crime Commission is filing a complaint with the state Supreme Court. Elloie says he’s not concerned. He did, however, revoke his earlier action and set the bail for Expose at $75,000.

Sunday’s editorial page contains letters blistering Judge Elloie. “I’ll tell you whose rights are being violated,” writes Allison Thomas of New Orleans. “Mine.”

It’s enough to make a preacher cuss.

The local campaigning goes forward. Columnist Stephanie Grace writes that an appointee of Mayor Nagin has contributed big money to a competitor’s campaign. Jimmy Reiss is chairman of the Regional Transit Authority, making him one of Mayor Ray Nagin’s most prominent appointees. Reiss and his wife have put their money–ten thousand dollars of it–on Ron Forman, head of the Audubon Nature Institute, and leader in the polls for City Hall in the April 22 election.

Someone who knows about these things has made a list of the big-money people who backed Nagin in his previous election, and it turns out most of them are supporting Forman and Mitch Landrieu, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor and little brother to Senator Mary Landrieu. Nagin, however, doesn’t need their money. Prior to the hurricane and the upheaval it wrought in local politics, he had already amassed $1 million for this campaign.

Grace concludes, “The overall message pretty much confirms what most of us already knew. The people who bolstered Nagin’s insurgent campaign the first time and were prepared to do it again, for the most part, have bolted to candidates who never would have considered running just seven short months ago. It’s just one more way to say that the hurricane has changed absolutely everything.”

They’ve found two more dead bodies in the Lower 9th Ward, one of them a child under age 10. These two were found in piles of collapsed lumber and rubbish, and seem to have floated in from somewhere else, a searcher said. Before bulldozing these eyesores, the authorities are going through with trained dogs, looking for bodies.

Residents of the Lower Ninth are divided on whether bulldozing is right or wrong. Another group of evacuees has put in a plea for the mayor and city council to advise them whether to rebuild. “Tell the truth,” they asked, specifically requesting for information on which neighborhoods will not be given the public services such as trash pickup and utilities. This goes counter to the mayor’s plan that anyone who wants to rebuild may do so. The citizens are asking the mayor to lead and not follow. The residents do not have enough information to lead and the mayor refuses to take the risk in an election year.

In Kenner, the mayor’s race continues to create division. Retiring police chief Nick Congemi is running against incumbent Phil Capitano, as well as others. Front page headline in Sunday’s paper: “Capitano vetoes purchase of police cruisers.” Chief Nick was ordering 30 new police cars, which was approved by the Kenner city council, when Mayor Phil performed the first veto by any Kenner mayor since 1977. The acrimony between these two is strong, going back to the last election when Capitano won over Congemi. This time the Times-Picayune is endorsing neither, but veteran council member Ed Muniz.

It turns out the state of Louisiana is not broke after all, the way everyone was expecting after the scattering of hundreds of thousands of our citizens and the destruction of so many businesses. 2005 may be the richest fiscal year in the state’s history, not counting the huge windfall of federal money given to deal with the hurricane damage. February’s state sales tax increased by 25% over the same period last year. No one was expecting this, or the increase in income from casinos and video gaming.

The Red Cross is firing some local supervisors, said to have diverted the supplies the RC sent in here and perhaps misrepresented what was being done with the money. Little information is forthcoming, but heads are rolling. Ninety-five percent of Red Cross personel are volunteers, as were these supervisors.

Enough of this already.

I spent Friday and Saturday at our state Baptist conference center below Alexandria. Tall Timbers hosted nearly 600 boys and men who make up the “Royal Ambassadors,” the boys organization in our churches, for their annual Congress. In addition to hearing missionaries and baseball players, the boys erected tents and slept outside, then raced their tiny home-made model cars. I was invited to be one of the speakers at three 30-minute class periods Saturday morning. Quite a challenge, addressing a group of boys ranging from the first through the sixth grades, along with the adults. I sent up a prayer for the Father to tell me what to do.

I drew for them and told them a story. “This is George,” I said, sketching a cartoon version of a generic guy. “And this is his home in New Orleans.” I told how George had no use for church or God and decided to ride out the hurricane while his wife and children drove to her mother’s in Dallas. The hurricane was a nightmare and George ended up on his rooftop for days, then was rescued and taken to the convention center for several more days of misery. Eventually, he and others were bused to Memphis where a Baptist church took them in and rolled out the red carpet. Good hot meals, showers, clean clothes, cots to sleep on, more food, and genuine kindness. Eventually, George’s brother-in-law drove him to Dallas to be reunited with his family.

When George returned to his flooded home, he stood in the front yard and cried. Everything he called home was ruined. A chainsaw crew from Arkansas–they said they were from a Baptist church–came down the street and took care of the tree across his garage. Later, a crew from some Missouri Baptist churches gutted out his house. George could not understand how these nice people had put their lives on hold and traveled hundreds of miles at their own expense just to help people like him. “Honestly,” George said, “I wouldn’t have done it for you. So, tell me the truth–why are you here?” “It’s because of Jesus,” one of them said. George said, “I don’t have a clue what that means.”

George and that crew had worked three days side by side cleaning out his house, and they developed a good rapport. Toward the end of the third day, the leader invited George to sit with him and he told the story of Jesus Christ. “This is not about us,” the man said. “It’s about Jesus. He told us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the hurting. That’s why we’re here. Jesus sent us to you.”

George said, “I’ve been so wrong about you people.” For years George had slandered Christians as stupid, religious nuts, and gullible. The churches were running a con and the preachers were in it for a buck. He saw now how he had misrepresented some pretty special peole. They had taken him in and helped him in Memphis and come to his house in New Orleans. He would never be able to pay them back.

“We don’t want pay,” the leader said. “But I’ll tell you what I would like.” “Anything,” George said. “I’d like the privilege of praying with you.” George thought, “This guy’s prayers, I will believe in.”

That day, George prayed with the Missouran to receive Christ as his Savior. George is a different man now.

I told the boys, “A million years from now, George will be telling his story in Heaven and he’ll say, ‘Katrina was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me.'”

A boy asked, “Is George real?”

I said, “He is very real. And I’ll tell you something else. There are a thousand in New Orleans just like him, people who have turned to the Lord Jesus Christ as a result of the loving ministry of God’s people.”

I left it right there, but perhaps I feel a need to explain here: George is a composite. He’s not one person. He’s typical of a lot of our people down here who went through the greatest crisis of their lives and came out of it as new people in Jesus Christ.

I told you I asked the Father what to tell these boys. He gave me the story and I drew the pictures. To my knowledge, Jesus didn’t draw pictures with sharpies, but He told stories. In fact, Scripture says he never preached without telling stories. So we have good precedent.

At lunch on Saturday

Standing in a long slow cafeteria line at Tall Timbers, several of us carried on conversations in every direction. A man near me asked, “You say you’re from New Orleans? Is everything all right down there?” I hesitated a minute, wondering if he was pulling my leg. Finally, I said, “Noooo. We had this hurricane.”

He didn’t smile and evidently was completely serious. He said, “Are the churches okay?” “Some of them,” I said. “We had 140 Baptist churches and missions before the storm and now we have 70 up and running.”

He did not say another word. I’m still puzzled by that little conversation.

When I told my wife Saturday night, she said, “It’s because New Orleans is not in the news any more. People are forgetting.”

I said, “Brian Williams is covering it. He’s got something on every night.” And he’s not the only one; other networks are keeping the story before the American public. The Baptist Press is staying on top of it, as are many of the state papers.

Now if we can just get people to pay attention.

I preached at the First Baptist Church of Luling Sunday morning. Pastor Todd and Tabby Hallman are in Rome. I told the people, “There is no truth to the rumor that the Pope is making Todd a Cardinal in the Catholic church.” None at all.

Sunday afternoon, I drew for three hours at a block party given by Memorial Baptist Church in Metairie. The outstanding Woodmont Baptist Church of Nashville was there in full force, lots of youth and adults setting up activities and leading a worship service. Pastor Jon Roebuck and my wife Margaret are distantly related (their ancestors hailing from the metropolis of Eutaw, Alabama), so we enjoyed a brief visit. Jon says their church will be sending work crews down before long. They will be welcome.

Memorial Church was severely wounded by Katrina–directly and indirectly–and needs all the encouragement it can get. My predecessor Fred Dyess is their interim pastor. They have a committee in search of a good pastor. Anyone wishing to send a resume should mail it in care of Tom Pewitt, Memorial Baptist Church, 5701 Veterans Boulevard, Metairie, LA 70003.

Someone told me years ago of a saying between local preachers: “No one should ever move to New Orleans with only a whisper from God.” It was probably meant as a joke, but these days, it conveys a good point: we want those to come labor here whom God leads.

This is a scarred land populated by a scarred people. Anyone coming to help, for a day or for a career, should be strong in the Lord and be willing to roll up his sleeves and serve. No executives please. Just servants.