Our Out of Range prayer group was tapping into the heart of God for this city, and we began asking, “Does he want to do even more than this? Is what we’re seeing only the beginning?” We felt a burden for the city we were in and for seeing it come to Christ in an incredible way.
What we visualized was something culminating in a huge revival at the Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints and often the Super Bowl. Again and again we returned to that image of people streaming into the Dome and having God show up in power. But the summer was now winding down, and it was time to begin preparing for the fall semester.
If we’d watched the news closely, we’d have learned that meteorologists were following the development of something called Tropical Storm 12, over the Bahamas, on the morning of August 24. It was hurricane season.
Two hours before making landfall in Florida the next morning, this tropical storm was upgraded to hurricane status. The name assigned to it was Katrina. After entering the Gulf, it moved from Category Three status to Category Five in only nine hours, and things got serious.
On August 29, it made landfall on the shores of Louisiana.
At the outset of those events, our prayer group capped off the summer by holding a retreat in Pass Christian, Mississippi, about an hour from New Orleans. Some of our wives gathered back in town at my home. We went to the retreat center to celebrate, continue praying together, and, as the Spirit led us, repent of sin and rededicate ourselves to God. It was a truly wonderful time, but that wasn’t surprising—serious prayer has the effect of bonding people together like nothing else.
I thought about the previous summer, when I’d been with Tim LaFleur in New Mexico. That had been a huge growth experience for me. This summer, praying with the guys had offered me another leap forward. I’d seen what God could do when his people took prayer seriously instead of simply giving it lip service.
This was a time of joy, of summing up our summer experience before moving into another school year. We had no idea how our lives were about to be disrupted.
As the storm continued to get worse, I remained convinced to ride it out. That’s what you do if you’re from the Gulf Coast—I was too Cajun to go back home, get Kandi, and evacuate. Some of the others felt the same way, and we decided to stay the course.
But Kandi overruled me. I checked in with her on the phone, and she said, “Come get me, Robby. I’ve got the TV on, and this thing looks serious. We need to evacuate.”
She’s always the voice of reason in my life, so I didn’t argue. I made the short drive back home. We packed our belongings in one suitcase, along with two to three days’ worth of clothing. Then we grabbed our dog Gracie and took off, leaving behind our other car, our wedding gifts, our pictures, and our videos. What we thought would be two to three days, however, lasted forever. There would be no home to come back to.
We figured Denham Springs, east of Baton Rouge, was a safe enough distance. Kandi’s family was there, and they took us in. Along with the rest of the world, we watched the reports in horror, with Katrina thrashing across the coast and then breaching the New Orleans hurricane surge protection in more than fifty places. The levees burst. Eventually, more than 1,800 people would lose their lives.
For someone like me who had lived so much of my life in that city, the images of the French Quarter were devastating. New Orleans had seemed ancient and somehow immortal; the places I’d known so well were now swept away in the floodwaters. People were on rooftops, praying for rescue. Thousands were in distress. The truth was laid bare: nothing on this earth lasts. Anything can be gone in an instant.
We saw those shots of the Superdome, swarming with evacuees, and I thought about all our prayers for a revival there. Really, God? This was the answer to our prayer? It was the exact opposite of everything we’d prayed about.
Denham Springs lost its power, but we continued to watch on an old four-inch, battery-operated TV set, found by my father-in-law. It was day three when I was finally able to talk to my parents. “Thank God you’re safe,” my mom said.
“You, too,” I said. “I’ve prayed for you guys. What have you heard about home?”
“We just found out we’ve lost everything.”
“What? Everything?”
“Ten to twelve feet of water to the roof in our home. It’s all destroyed. And Robby—your home, where you’ve been staying—there was an oil spill at the refinery.”
She was talking about Chalmette’s Murphy Oil facility, where the storm brought down a huge tank, and thousands of gallons of oil gushed into the water. Everything was contaminated, and we wouldn’t be allowed to go near our home for months. All that we’d left behind was gone forever. Along with my stuff being kept by my parents. Pictures of my whole childhood; collectables; old mementos; basketball videos; everything.
I felt worse for my dad. Dad’s whole family heritage was lost. Multiply these stories by the whole population of New Orleans and the vicinity. Small towns were destroyed. People disappeared and were never accounted for. You couldn’t feel too sorry for yourself, because someone you knew had it even worse.
A weather event had turned our world upside down. It was impossible not to
