Articles from March 2023

Upcoming Spring Summit – At UW River Falls April 21-22

On Fri & Sat, April 21-22… Street Level is hosting a Spring Summit for members and participants from UW Stout, UW Super, UM Duluth, and UW River Falls.

On Friday evening, the session is for Street Level members, only, and will be at the Glen Park Pavillion in River Falls.

On Saturday, the session will be on-campus at UW River Falls. The sessions will begin in the morning and last through the mid-afternoon. Lunch and snacks are provided.

To register or ask questions, contact streetlevelministries@jfbelievers.com.

The Long Way Back…

With our last morning in New Orleans dawning, the team spent the last couple hours visiting our favorite coffeeshops and grocery stores to prepare for the road back to Wisconsin. We got one last look at the church building we spent so much time at from our bus ride, a fitting way to end our week of work.

Everything completed and packed up, we settled into our seats and enjoyed the view of beautiful Louisiana speeding past. After a gorgeous sunrise, we pulled into Chicago and then all piled into the vans to begin our driving segment of the journey.

The past week and a bit have been filled with so many fun stories, challenges, and blessings. From a quick change of plans start on the way down, to four days of work in the sun or in the shotgun building, and then one final sprint to beat the storm, God has been working in us and guiding us through every step of the way! We are coming back thankful we finished what we came down to do, and grateful for the opportunity to serve. Thanks for holding down the fort for us!

Annex Complete!

Finishing the Work

Today was a race against the rain, and we won! 

By 10am (when the rain was expected to pour) we finished the siding on the shed, moved floor boards to be reused, swept, picked up trash, and filled up our third and final 12 ton dumpster. 

With the accomplishing our goal of updating the shed and completely gutting out the shot gun building, we took the rest of the evening to experience more of New Orleans. 

We stopped at Café Du Monde for some classic beignets and later finished our evening off with an epic buffet of crawfish for dinner. All in all, we sure were over blessed!

Making Progress on the Church

As in the past few days, the team basically split up into two groups: some who worked on the shed, and others who continued to finish up on the demolition work. The roof got finished in the morning, and then we proceeded to work on siding the rest of the day. In the evening, we grilled out and enjoyed some of the last bit of Louisiana sunshine we’ll be getting on this trip. We ended the night with a walk through the Garden District.

Still Working

Today we continued on with the demolition work and the end is near!
We had a group installing the metal roof, some people prepping for siding tomorrow, and another group cleaning out the basement of the church. We had beautiful sunny weather today!
Thank you for your continued prayers. Please continue to pray for safety, energy for continuing the work, and that fruit will remain from this work!

Another Day on the Job

Today was another great day of demolition and construction! We started working on the roof of “the shed” and are halfway done! We prepped it for new metal shingles installation tomorrow and finished the all four windows. We had half the team working inside doing more demolition, breaking down walls, ceilings, and termite-infested floors! We had some conversations with people walking by, and Philip dropped by again and we got to eat lunch with him. Please continue to pray for safety and strong unity amongst the team. God’s been very good to us.

First Day of Work

Finally, after days of travel and anticipation, we got to work on the future location of New Orleans Baptist Church! Since we are so many in number, we were able to divide into multiple groups.

One team cleaned out some of the rooms inside the main church while another team demolished the interior of the side building with sledgehammers, sawz-alls, and brute force. Thankfully, no major injuries occured amidst the falling plaster and exploding toilets. Another group worked on “the shed” – installing windows and prepping to install new siding.

Philip, one of the men who occasionally attends the church, dropped in to help throughout the day. Please continue to pray for safety and unity as we head into day two tomorrow!

Church Service and City Streets

This morning we jumped up after a great night’s rest, and got to join in on Pastor Kyle’s Sunday morning class and church service. He preached on Melchizedek. We met members, like Rosaline and George, and guests who do full-time missions in Sudan. We were thankful to be able to be, inexplicably, a part of this church’s soon-to-be history. Tomorrow, we will begin the work.

The afternoon was spent walking downtown and taking a train car to the historic French Quarter. Everyone we passed by as a group was so friendly, always stopping to see what so many people were up to!

We grilled outside for dinner and got our hearts and minds ready for the main work ahead. We look forward to seeing just what God has in store for us.

Welcome to New Orleans!

After a night on the train, the team rose to watch the sunrise, read, and play games until arriving in NOLA. Once in the city we made our way walking and by bus to NOLA Baptist Church. Kyle welcomed us in and told us the story of their church. He also gave us a word of encouragement for the messy job of demo work ahead.