Where are the people?

We arrived a little after five p.m. last night, and took Highway 90 along the coast from the airport to our destination. The once-4-lane interstate is now a two-lane local road. It is amazing that it is open, considering that we see craters here and there, and buildings precariously close to the road that had once belonged blocks away.

We then noticed the lack of people. Where is everyone? We did some workers still plugging away at some sites. We saw two or three tents pitched, and some vehicles (a school bus, many tractor-trailers, some pickups) that are apparently being used as homes. Where are the children? We're told that a school bus stops in the area for the children, but no one we talked to seemed to know where it is the children go.

At Java Joe's, I've seen a couple of businessmen who could pass as town fathers or contractors or insurance adjusters; and there were a few who, like the teens I wrote about earlier, who stop in to say hello before the memorial service.

There are some people standing around at the bus station, located across the street from St. Paul's where we are staying, making the locals and some of us a little nervous as they "don't seem to be from around here" and don't seem to be here for a purpose other than to kind of wander in a daze. We're here to help, but the irony is, sometimes we don't know who to help, or how. Do we feed the transients coming in from the bus station? Or is that encouraging a behavior we don't want to encourage? I can't help but think of Jesus talking about "the least of these" as some talk about turning them away, locking them out. But concern for safety is also a real one. Was Jesus' world any less dangerous?

There are no easy answers to these questions, and we are often telling ourselves that we will be led by The Spirit.