August 25 – “And so it begins”

And so it begins …

We started day one of “official” hurricane preparedness day in just the right way … we went to WalMart.  We picked up a tension bar and some stain that Chris wanted for some projects around the house.  There were not all that many shoppers, but we did notice they were having to restock water.  In fact, they were putting pallets of water all over the store.  If you need a drink of water, WalMart may be the place to go.

We decided to cancel home group last night.  From what we could tell no one was coming anyway.  Just too much to do.  It is, after all, hurricane preparedness day.  Fairly early on they called for voluntary evacuation of the West End of those with medical or special access needs.  Later in the day that spread to a general voluntary evacuation because the West End tends to get cut off when water gets high.  And it will probably get high.  We heard reports that one church in the East End has already canceled services for Sunday.  We will probably do the same, but I won’t make the final call on that until tomorrow. 

They worked on the 40 Steps Mansion pretty frantically yesterday.  One of the guys told us they were determined “to beat the rain.”  Another of the workers came over and had the audacity to ask if they could us our electricity “for just an hour or so.”  He was a sheetrock guy, I think.  They plugged in one extension cord.  It was all I could do not to prank them over the course of the two or more hours they were actually hooked up.  I really wanted to randomly unplug them, and then hook them back up before they could come check on the connection.  Chris wouldn’t let me. 

Our neighbor across the street, Erynn came over to get our take on the storm as a couple of old timers.  They were thinking about evacuating to Magnolia where her parents live.  Problem is, she is scheduled to work at Shriner’s on Saturday.  We told her we were staying because it really looked like a rainmaker more than anything.  Chris gave her the lowdown on what supplies to make sure they had on hand.  Later in the day her husband Taylor got home and was having trouble getting the storm blinds hung back up.  I went over and helped him get the ones up that had hooks on them.  There was still one window left, though, that he didn’t have a blind for.  I pointed out that there were a lot of plywood sheets across the street at 40 Steps just lying around waiting to fly or float away when the storm hits.  He considered it briefly.  Thought he could just say that it was just sucked over onto his front window, and instead of breaking it, the plywood imbedded itself right over that window, miraculously protecting it from further damage.  He finally decided he wouldn’t mind replacing just one window.  Oh, and he said they were planning to stick around.  Welcome to hurricane season in Galveston, neighbors.

1 Peter 5:5 says, “Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’”

Father, I suppose the storm event has officially begun for us.  We could use your presence and protection.  Amen.