WOOT - We Offer Our Testimony By Addie Domske

Can iMovie Make A Difference in the Effort to Help In NOLA?

Here was the pitch: go to New Orleans in January, revisit the places we had been before…and film and edit movies all week. Am I dreaming? A mission trip where I can have an excuse to be annoying in my efforts to document things? Serving the Lord by sitting in front of my MacBook all week? I’m in.

During the week, I got the best of both worlds. In the morning, Gary and I worked on filming and then I would either spend the afternoon editing that footage, or at Wilson Charter School with the rest of the group.

The whole experience led me to think about how we make a difference in the world.
Does it make a difference to spend an afternoon hanging out with kids we’ll never see again? Does it make a difference to travel that far just to sit and make movies? Can I, as an 18-year-old high school student, make a difference? Does it make a difference to rebuild New Orleans at all, when there is such a risk of our work being undone?

The consistent answer I found: yes.

It makes a difference in the life of a kid whose gone through a trauma to just come and be their friend, not questioning them on their “Katrina Experience,” but rather letting them run over to you at lunch, rip out your hair-tie, and start braiding your hair.

It makes a difference to the people here in New Wilmington to actually see the work we did in New Orleans. To have that documented “journal” from each youth makes a difference in our efforts to spread the story of New Orleans. And it’s a story that needs to be told.

Kids in high school made a difference because they had something to say. Every time a youth would come up to me with their finished script, I felt like skipping. They were so wise, I felt like I was listening to my 94-year-old grandma. They were so intuitive, and picked up on such thought provoking issues to talk about that I couldn’t wait to get a camera in their face. They took it seriously.

As one of the youth put it in their video, it does make a difference to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe the small job we accomplished during our visit didn’t make a difference on the grand scale of things, but it did make a difference to that person.

Can we make a difference in New Orleans? We did to them.

To see the videos made during the SHYG January mission trip to New Orleans, visit www.youtube.com/weofferourtestimony