Well anyways, this was sent to me by a friend and I thought you would enjoy it.

Let me back track a bit. After the hurricane came through we got power back late Saturday. So we came home that night. And since we were tired from basically staying up all night (the hurricane came about 12am-9am) we thought to ourselves “we’ll take a shower in the morning, power is great, yay.”

We had another bad storm during the night. A feeder band created over Houston. It brought lots of rain into a system that was already maxed out from Hurricane Ike. We live close to Mayde Creek (some pronounce May-Dee). Mayde Creek is usually nothing much than a little stream at best. At the time it was full to the top of her banks. Then like 80 bajillion more inches of rain came. Of course I was sleeping through all of this so I didn’t know.

KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, we heard early in the morning.
Cliff’s Brain - AHH WHATS GOING ON…oh….why did someone knocking on our door this early?
Teresa at the door - “Hey neighbor.”
Neighbor - “Hey, you should move your car so it doesn’t get flooded.”
Cliff’s brain to himself - “Move the car? It’s in the drive-way.”

Over night Mayde Creek flooded her banks into our neighborhood. My cul-de-sac was now…actually…Mayde Creek. Teresa’s car was at the back of the drive-way and water was starting to come up on it. And we lost power. Again. It was a little surreal at first. I mean who ever expects to see the street under several feet of water. And we lost power again. This time though, we couldn’t leave. We couldn’t leave to go to church (yes we still had it), or to someone’s house with power, or anything. Which was a little weird.

Here are a few pictures. (Click to make bigger) And note - we are high ground of the area.

Teresa’s Car

Our cul-de-sac

Outside the sul-de-sac

This is my neighbors mailbox - half under water.

The water had started to recede at this point. You could now see the blue at the top of that fire hydrant. You couldn’t see that before.

I’m ready to explore the flood!

So yeah, that day kind of sucked. But our house is really high so we didn’t get any water in our house. But we didn’t have power for a few days again, so we have been at other people’s house the last two days. The best part was, if you recall from earlier in the post, after we got power back the first time we came home and went to bed. Then we lost power and we were flooded…so who knows if the water system is contaminated. We hadn’t showered for the third day now. Eeww. And now we can’t leave our house. Great!

But we were lucky. Some people had real problems. We just had some fence down. Others had tree’s down, roof’s messed up, houses destroyed, etc. Galveston - as in the entire island - was….well let’s just that it is really bad off. I mean REALLY bad. Here are a few pictures from the city. (mostly our neighborhood).

This is our "hunker down" spot in the house.

Oh - sorry if you tried to call us, cell phone service is not working very well.

www.WorshipInAction.net

But when your in your 30’s what do you have? Babies? Mortgage? Insurance deductibles? You can’t do stupid things…you have responsibilities to tend to, people that depend on you. I mean when I was in college sure I’d jump off that cliff, or run around the parking lot naked. $40 to drink that liquid that’s been in the fridge for a year…why not!

But now…now I have to make sure to go to bed by 9:30 so I can wake up for work the next day. And if I drink that liquid I’d have to make sure to take my stomach medicine first.

No, in just three days I can no longer claim, with any sense of real truth, to be young. I am about to be MEDIAN. Yep, that is what I am. I’m not old by any means, but I’m also not young anymore. 30 years have gone and past, and old is like…60. So I must be median. (all though all the “young adult” Sunday School classes at Tallowood would disagree, but all those old-er people are just being delusional. It’s time to face reality…you have kids as old as me, you’re not a young adult.)

So what do I do now? I joined a gym. I figured if I was no longer young then I should do all those things not young people try to do to reclaim their youth. I also might hire a clown or magician for my birthday party on Friday. What do you think?

I guess I’m ok with being median and not “young” anymore. At least my wife is still young!! Since I’m median and she’s still young I guess that means I have a trophy wife!!! he he he he. After all she’s barely half way through her 20’s.

Yeah I guess I’m not really going to go back to crazy. I should just take my Konsyl and be happy.

P.S. Vote in the poll for either a clown or magician.

“The main question before us is not a question about Islam and xtianity; THEROCK or America. The main question before us tonight is this: if the terrorists find us tonight and we are left to face God with all of our ‘ayb - our shame - how shall we face God and give an accounting for all that which shames us? We should be giving honor to God, yet all we have is shame to offer. Who will replace our shame with honor that we could stand before God and give Him the worship He deserves?

Sometimes the question is not always one of right or wrong, one way or another, or some ideological battle of religion, but simply of a fundamental issue of human life. Shame vs. honor. We all deal with it. Some call it honor, others call it pride. Coming into the presence of God is a hard thing, and one that requires you to face your “shame” or sin or guilt or whatever it might be. As you pray during the next month for Ramadan, pray that Jesus would cleanse those that need cleansing of their shame. Pray that people would receive his unfailing love. Pray that they would bear themselves before a loving God and that he would open their eyes and hearts to Him. Pray for peace.

Kids Klash

Most of the Kids Klash are hand-knit by mothers in Kurdish villages as wage-earning for the entire family. But some are produced at home by land mine victims who cannot work otherwise; and still others are made in Iraqi prisons as a means of teaching inmates the life-skills they need to re-enter society.

Medical solutions. Physical and social rehabilitation. Caring for Iraq’s poor. Great kids shoes! All things done through the Buy Shoes. Save Lives. program.

Cliff Lusk for President

(RSS Readers need to open the post to see the video)

Here is one of his posts that you should go read. And pay particular attention to the middle three paragraphs that start with “In the realm of faith formation,…”

In other news I’m going to be doing some training the rest of this week. Here is what I’m doing:

For almost a year, Global Connection Partnership Network has been developing training that is church-based and deliverable online.  The training consists of forty two lessons under the broad categories of Foundations, Character, Community, Competency, Church, Connection, and Covenant.  These lessons cover such topics as cross-cultural living, approaching people of other faiths, partnerships, and conflict resolution.  The launch of this new form of training will take place on August 14-15, 2008 in Arlington, TX.  Once a person is trained and certified to faciliate a learning group, he or she will be able to access the lessons and begin training people in the context of their local church.  To learn more about how to be part of this initial workshop, go to http://www.gcpn.org/missional_formation.html .