Blessings

Thanks a ton for the prayers.

There are too many blessings to mention. We went to Galveston on Friday and Saturday and cleaned out the basement/garage, power washed (hooray for power washers!!) and bleached the whole thing and took the soggy stuff to the curb (blessing that we did not have to decide what to throw away, IKE decided for us!!). I found five garbage cans in front of our house and right as Meghan was filling the last one to the top, the trash truck came around the corner. He emptied all five in less than a minute (HUGE blessing that the trash trucks are running). I think from now on, we will be as excited as Katelin gets when the trash truck comes. Meghan's dad was kind enough to come down for the day and put in some hard work...thanks Randy!! Our basement is cleaner than before IKE. Now I feel like we have to take our shoes off before walking across the clean floors. I guess it took a storm to make us clean out all of that junk!

There was no damage in the main house other than the stinky fridge. We have running water and actually got power last night (blessing of all blessings!!) and got to sleep in our own bed!! The AC units were under water, so I don't think we will be living there permanently until the AC is fixed, but sleeping there last night at least gave us hope.

You can actually pray for most all of our closest friends that were not as lucky. Most all of our friends lost everything to the water damage. Salt water does horrible things in just hours (I was amazed at the corrosion and rust on some of my new tools.) Most of our friends have not been on the Island to see the damage yet and it has been over a week. They are all going to come home to a stinky mess. Two of our closest friends, John and Erika Anderson, are both students renting a house and without renter's insurance. We went by their house yesterday and most all of their stuff is ruined, their dresser and TV stand were already covered in mold. If that was not enough, they have nowhere to live. It is almost impossible to find a place to live around here now with all of the damage and evacuees. They are going to stay with us until they find a place. I'm sure all of our friends that had any water damage will have difficulty finding a place to live as they go back to work, so you can pray for that. Also pray for the students and residents at UTMB that don't have a hospital to study at for at least another month...maybe even as long as 4-6 months. There are tons of families that are going to be separated and displaced because of this (including ours).

I am humbled by all of the help that is on the Island and I can only see it increasing as more Islanders come home. I was driving down Broadway yesterday and saw a man in the middle of the road holding a sign "Free Ice and Water at CVS"...so I turned into CVS and without getting out of my truck, two ladies came up and said "how many bags?" I told her two and before I could say "thanks," one of the ladies said "tell your neighbors to come by" and were on to the next customer. That simple act of service strangely made my throat swell up and brought tears to my eyes. There are thousands of workers waiting in long lines on the highway to get onto Galveston Island to help those in need. Sounds a little mushy, but it is times like these that make me proud to pay taxes and proud to be an American.

Thanks again for the prayers!!

--Kevin