GOD is So Good. I wanted to share some of my activities and ministry with the LGBTQ+ community. I will start on Dec 1 st , 2025, World AIDS Day. I was invited by the Crescent City Leather Men Organization to say the opening prayer at their annual Candlelight procession and Call to Remembrance World AIDS Day event. The event starts in the neutral ground in front of the Phoenix Bar and proceeds as a group with candles lit down Elysian Fields to Washington Square Park, where the AIDS emorial is. Once we arrive, the event opens with a prayer for those whom we lost and those still living with HIV, and the community and people who support them. After the prayer opening, people share stories of the people they love but no longer see, and the stories are full of the imagery that has been our community's experience over the last four decades of HIV/AIDS. It stormed the whole time, but the weather didn’t dampen the spirits of the attendees or the stories of their experience of love and loss due to HIV. Thank you, New Orleans, Leather Men, for the invite and the wonderful annual event you host.
During the 2025 HIV awareness week of events, I attended 4 events total, and I participated in three events, including St. Anna’s beautiful Healing service with a Call to Remembrance HIV awareness week event. The event was a community effort with three outside LGBTQ+ organizations involved from the very start of the planning through the actual event, and they shared in the amazing healing and love that appeared to be shared by all who attended. Thank you to the LGBT + Archive Project of Louisiana, The Faerie Playhouse, and Inclusive Louisiana for your efforts in making this event a huge success. I have had the wonderful experience of attending many healing services, and they all were quite incredible; however, St. Anna’s and our Community members' Healing service was hands down the most powerful healing service that I have ever attended. I had many attendees after the event share with me how much love and hope they experienced while attending St. Anna’s Healing service. It is my hope and prayer that we make the HIV community Healing service with a call to Remembrance an annual event at St. Anna’s and part of the week-long events that happen throughout the city, starting on December 1st, World AIDS Day every year.
Fast forward through Advent and Christmas, where I put up information in the local LGBTQ+ bars about St. Anna’s toy drives and ways to assist Anna's Place NOLA, to Mardi Gras 2026. St. Anna’s was invited to do the invocation at The Royal Order of AmonRas’ 61st Mardi Gras Ball. I was asked if I could attend and say the invocation, as Reverend Allison was unavailable. I enjoyed being with the Krewe and the many members whom I knew and the many more whom I didn’t know. The Ball was fabulous; a great time was had by all. We soon after the Ball received an invitation to attend the annual AmonRa rush party, where we received a check in the amount of $1200.00. Thank you, Royal Order of AmonRa, for your support. Side note (AmonRa is a sixty- one-year-old gay Mardi Gras Krewe that needs our love and support. Please attend their annual Mardi Gras Ball, better yet, become a member and help make sure that AmonRa continues to serve our community for many years to come.)
I do a lot of work in the community weekly with the unhoused, people living with HIV, people in recovery, and people living in food scarcity; these communities, unfortunately, include LGBTQ+ people. I live as an advocate and activist for the LGBTQ+ community; if I am breathing, I will always be serving my LGBTQ+ community. Thank you, St. Anna’s, for all the many ways you serve the LGBTQ+ community and for allowing me to represent you out in our community. On a side note, this year I was honored by CrescentCare at their World AIDS Day event for my decades of volunteering and my 15 years of being part of their HIV Awareness week service. I received both a certificate and an engraved modular glass award. My heart overflows with gratitude for the recognition. I accepted this award not only for myself, but also for my ex-husband, Ken Brodie Jr (may he rest in peace), who was always just as involved as I was, though his actions were mostly behind the scenes.
In closing, I would like to share a Quote by Mother Teresa. “Not all of us can do Great things but we can do small things with Great LOVE”.
Always, Eternally Thankful
Reverend Deacon Ben Nobles