Christian Photographers Community

 

Uh, Larry!  I found another clock to set...my radio/Cassette/CD player.  Now I think I have them all. 

Al and Larry?  How was the cyber chili?  It was great here.  Just wonder if it lost any of it's umphhh going through cyberspace! 

Not much happened today and not planning much tomorrow.  Rest!  I am super sleepy tonight so hopefully I get a great night's rest.

Good Morning all you Beautiful people,

Etta Sue, Thank you so much for this mornings readings, I pray my faith is a  witness to all who need leading to the Lord..I have a friend who lives in Washington and we have 1 hour every morning of Bible study and reading, it is wonderful to have friends who have faith as stong as you do,

  This is a quick up date,

My sister Laura(45), is now resting at home until we get word regarding her surgery. we talked last night on the phone and she was very tired, Laura had her first heart surgery at 5 and has had 4 more since than, she now has a mechanical heart value that pumps her blood for her, the anuerism is on the stent of her mechanical valve and her aorta. When you sit next to Laura you can actually hear her heart valve tick as it pumps the blood in her. 


  This has been very hard on my mother who is 70+ years, Please keep MOM in your prayer too!!


Thank you all for your loving kindness and prayers for our family..

Alma

Oh Father, teach Alma, Laura, and the mom all the wonderful things You have for them to learn through this.  Make Your presence known to them.

Etta Sue - I'm sure it was wonderful cyber chili, but not only did it lose its umph, but it got lost totally.  I'm disgruntled.

Thanks Etta Sue for the reminders for all of us in today's devotional.  I didn't get any cihili!   


Alma, thanks for the update on Laura.  What a time she's had during her life.  I know that I'll continue to pray for your dear sister.

Hi Al Moak!  

Good morning!  I have had another great workout, and am now ready to face the day. 

Etta Sue, that is one of my favorite stories in the Bible.  The faith and determination of the friends of  the paralyzed man is just amazing.  Can you imagine getting up on someone's roof and tearing a hole big enough to lower a man on a mat?  I always wonder about the reaction of the home owner??  Wouldn't you just love to have been there that day?  Our Jesus is worthy of all praise. 

Alma, your sister has really had her trials, hasn't she?  Is she married?  If so, does she have children?  We will continue to pray for her, for you, and for your mother.  As a Mom of a disabled daughter about the same age, I know what she is going through.

It is way too warm here for November!!  Up into the 80s again today, for the third day in a row!  "They" say we are in for the warmest winter in many years; which is not a good thing.  The crops, wheat especially, need the cold weather, and it also kills many bugs and things.  I know, I know, always something!  I will enjoy the warmer weather, but the farmers do not like it.  Milo harvest is in full swing now.  They cut the field near us yesterday.

I need to pack up some stuff to mail and go to the post office.  See you later!

Good Morning y-all. Thank you Etta Sue for the devotional. I loved the photos you sent me yesterday especially the animals.

Last night at church one of the sisters gave me two big bags of clothing, some of it fits and some doesn't. I now have 6 more pts. of pants a very pretty dress and a beautiful skirt.. I have a bag that I am taking to Versal for her to try on and another bag for the Salvation Army.  Aren't our brothers and sisters wonderful?

My friend Willa and 3 other members of her family have left Arkansas top return home. Please keep them in prayer for safe travel. They are planning to take about a week to get here 'cause Orville who is 87 can only ride for 4-5 hours. They have been gone since  the middle of September.

Tonight is the night of the caregivers dinner and presentations. I hope it is not thundering and lightening or real heavy rain so Jan will be able to go.

Alma I am praying for you and your sister and mom.

Morning Janet

TTYL

Hmmm........where is everyone today?  Must be really busy!  Me, too.

Hi, Marilyn!

Buzzing off to get more stuff done...............

Etta Sue:  A good devotion on faith. 

Carol

I went back and read the posts. 

Alma:  I just want to wish your sister a very quick recover.  Blessings

Larry:  It would be so much fun to work on a craft sale.

Janet:  We just joined a neighborhood exercise center and have really started doing so much more - Don had to take a nap yesterday. and, I have been so sleepy every afternoon but trying to work through this.  What a neat trip you are going on - Copper Canyon.  It has always sounded so nice. 

Pat:  Is it getting chilly for your area now?  We have cold night but it has still be fairly warm here.  Windy today. 

I am on several committees and now was sent a note that at a brunch, they made a mistake and have me down for making food for 45 people.  Well, I will just go ahead and do it as it is planned.  There are other things going on here & we are thinking of going to another church group that plans work on outside events - Honduras orphanage & Katrina work and so forth.  Don't know where that will lead us.  We still want to work with our own homeless but this has become a political hot potato in this area so many needs to be fulfilled. 

Carol

Well, I've been working on the minutes for the Hiking Club meeting this evening and I've just got them done.  Yippppeee!

I am back at home for now and will be off agin in a couple of hours. I have filled my pill boxes with my vitamins for the next month. I stopped at the salvation Army to drop off a bag of donations and get a pair of shoes and some bowls.

Be back later

 
Good afternoon everyone.  I hope you remember me; my face must look strange to you by now!    I do come in occasionally and read though.  But for the most part I have to admit to being absent.  So much has been going on at our house this year, Earl had to get a pace maker in July, in Amarillo.  This was because of having black out spells for several months due to a heart problem.  Then he had to have a nuclear stress test about a month ago, and that led to a heart cath which was done Tuesday.  Praise God, there is no blockage but the doctor did find some weakness in the ascending aorta walls.  There is actually a family history of this.  The doctor said not to worry about it, it is not that bad.  We finally came home last night.  We have been burning some expensive gas lately!

I am going to post an article which our daughter wrote and put into our family website yesterday.  I just now found it there and thought you might like to read it.  She has been gone to Louisiana on a disaster relief mission, and got home Tuesday night.  We have not seen her yet, and she only lives down the street from us by 4 houses!  She is tired and we are tired so none of us have gotten out today.  

Here is her story of her experiences on the trip to LA.  I thought you might like to see a report from one who was actually there to help.  It was a shorter stay than they thought it would be, but Glory to God, it is not now needed any longer where they were located.
Bye, Janice

Elaine Williford - Nov 2, 2005   View | Viewers
Categories: Elaine stuff
     I went with New Mexico Southern Baptist Disaster Relief to prepare meals in Slidell, Louisiana.   NM had teams doing meals since the first couple of days after Katrina (we were the 9th relief team from NM).   When we got there Thursday we were told we would be closing Sunday and tearing down the NM kitchen Monday to return home.   Red Cross was shutting down their operations at that site after the meals on Sunday so we had to leave.   Monday was like tearing down a circus - we had 4 tents that made our kitchen.   Everything had to go into a trailer and there was an extra, small trailer that carried the convection ovens.

Not much time to do anything extra. We had about 30 min to look around some of Slidell on Friday and about 1 hr to see a tiny part of New Orleans on Saturday.   Still so much clean-up to do.   Car lots with millions of dollars worth of cars covered in mud and most with broken windows.   Cars standing on end in ditches, mangled boats, etc.   Railroad tracks that were rusted and will probably have to be replaced before trains can return.   We only saw 2 working traffic signals in NO - they were around the superdome.   We saw no one downtown except a few national guard.   Debris had been removed from downtown.   Was pretty eerie - knowing it should be teeming with activity and nothing happening - empty shopping center parking, little traffic on the interstate, etc.   No animals in either NO or Slidell except 1 cat the last couple of nights.   I was amazed on the way to Slidell with the trees that would be in the middle of a bunch of trees and only some of the middle ones would be damaged.   Where the storm surge hit, the trees had been killed by the salt water.

Electricity is still being turned on in Slidell by sections - one of the Red Cross workers was excited Saturday because his house was supposed to get electricity which meant he could move out of the hospital room he had lived in for 9 weeks.   I asked him about it on Sunday and he said he had power for a couple of hours and it went out again.   There were so few people in his neighborhood that he didn't know if the electric company would even know it had gone off again.   He said it did return later that evening.  

I'll post a link to pic's when we get them ready.   The team members agreed to give CD's of our pic's to one member to make a combined CD since some of us had better camera angles than others (I think I have a lot of flash against van window shots!)

There had been a NM and a Kentucky team doing meals at that site in Slidell.   They were originally doing 10,000 meals/day. The Kentucky team left the morning after we got there and the NM team we relieved left the next day (we got part of a day of hands-on training).   Our team prepared 4500 meals a day for volunteers, the meals that were sent out by Red Cross to neighborhoods on ERV's (emergency relief vehicles) and the drive-thru meal, ice & water line at our site.   Our group had a serving line for the volunteers only so we didn't have a lot of exposure to the locals unless they were also Red Cross workers.   The volunteers included mudders (they cleaned out mud and sheet rock from buildings), log cutters, cabinet makers, people working on the church, meal workers, Red Cross workers and people who stayed a couple of days at a time to do whatever.  

My team was made up of 12 people from the Clovis area.   A friend of one of the 12 joined us when he left a meal site in Texas that was closing and a couple from Colorado that had been there several weeks and were helping wherever they could (they planned to stay there a while longer and then go to Florida).   We were very blessed to have a couple from the NM team that we relieved that agreed to stay with us.   She had worked out a system to know how many cans or packages to open for each Red Cross truck or serving line and how many camrows were needed for each.   (A camrow is what we put the hot or cold food into - they could keep food at the right temp for up to 12 hours.)  

Everything we "cooked" was pre-cooked or needed water added to complete that item.   We were basically heating up to temp or cooling down to temp.   But that took a lot of time considering the quantities involved.   Had to wash, dry, sanitize and glove our hands any time we did something different - including touching the sides of cans versus touching the tops of cans!   I'm very tired of constant washing!   I was lucky enough to not be in on the pot stirring.   We had 9 burners and someone would have to stand by each pot and stir with what looked like a canoe paddle to reach the bottom of the pots.   That was a much hotter job than the jobs I did.

Red Cross also had 2 "circus" tents set up for people to come get free donated food and clothing and toiletries.   I didn't actually work in that area to separate the donated items - needed all the rest I could get.   We were to start breakfast at 4:30 AM and didn't finish up the day until about 8 PM.   (I thought they said we were to be there at 4 so I got there early the 1st day.) Had a debriefing each evening and then hit the beds!   (I took 2 air mattresses and the bottom one sprung a big leak the first night and was flat the rest of the time.   The 2nd mattress had lost some of its inner walls to make the air even so the air would move to the side I was not laying on and therefore I slept at a "list" for most of the night!)

We stayed at 1st Baptist Church which had had flooding of 2 1/2 to 3 1/2'.   It was several miles in-land from any body of water.   So I guess the storm surge is what got to the church.   The sheetrock halfway up each wall and the flooring had been removed.   We were told not to walk barefoot due to raw sewage that had been on floor and the sheetrock dust.   (They had replaced the sheetrock but had not taped or painted or papered anything yet.   Light switchplates were non-existent and the few electric outlets that were live didn't have plates.   The bathroom had hospital curtains added for privacy the week before we got there.   A company had sent in a shower trailer so we got hot showers.   We had good weather (it got a little warm the last 2 days) but hit rain on the way back.

There were 3 vehicles going thru together on the way back.   I was in the last one and we had a narrow escape on the way back.   A ladder flew out of the back of a pickup and was skidding all over the road.   Our driver did a great job of trying to guess where it would be when we hit and swerving all around to avoid it- it just scraped the sides of the tires.   I was so grateful that we were the only vehicle without a trailer - we would definitely have lost control if a trailer had been involved.   That poor driver has also gotten stuck with the Ft Worth/Dallas and Baton Rouge rush hour traffic on the way down.  

It was exhausting work but I would do it again.   Hopefully that won't happen for a long time.        


   



   

Thanks Janice, for your daughter's wonderful first-hand description of events at NO.  I met some Southern Baptist men who had also worked down there.  Oh how we ought to thank God for all these workers! Pray that their Christian testimony by way of their works will no be lost on people.

I've enjoyed reading the posts today.

News from my doctor. He says he can now begin to use the term "bone on bone" although the healing is nowhere near complete, yet.

However, the WONDERFUL news is that I do not have charcot joint syndrome. Praise His Wonderful Name!

I get to take 2-3 steps unassisted, am to put away the crutches and use my walker in the house, and only use the wheelchair in the office building at work because it's so big.

It has been hard for me to concentrate on my duties today - I've been so thankful and praising God to any and all who would hear me.

Ruth Ann

Good news, indeed, Ruth Ann!   

I have been reading along with all the reports lately and find myself nearly overwhelmed with it all.  So much sickness and pain and problems.  But there has also been good news and praise reports, so that is something to praise God for.

I am feeling rather badly at the moment because I just received news of the horrible death of a dear -- long time -- friend.  Actually the son of some friends from my childhood.  I can only imagine what this news is doing to those parents.  They are 84 and 89 years of age and were not with their son when he died.  I know how that felt when I couldn't be with my daughter when she died, so I can certainly sympathize.  I HATE this kind of news!!

I enjoyed watching a really terrific stormy day today!  I even built a fire for only the second time this season!  At the moment it is not raining, but I have a feeling we will be seeing more wind and rain before too long.  There have been high wind warnings out for most of the south coast. 

I need to get something to eat, now and then I'll be back. 

Y'all take care ... and live in love!

Janice, how wonderful to see you here again!  I have missed you!  Thank you for sharing your daughter's experiences with the hurricane relief efforts.  Thank God for those who selflessly give of their time and efforts to help those in need.

Ruth Ann, I am praising God with you for your good reports!!

Jane, sorry you got bad news.  I'll bet your fire feels really good, huh?  I love a wood fire, they are so cozy, and I love the smell, too.

Carol, it sounds as if you and your hubby are two more of those people for whom we should be thankful.  Thank you for all you do for others.

Has Larry been here today?

Hi, Pat!

I just got home from a very lovely evening out at the Caregivers Celebration dinner.  The county board of Supervisors has  proclaimed this month Caregivers month Now if they would only give us our raise. Thje food was catered by St. Vincents dePauls and excellent. We had baked chicken in some really good sauce, Vegetable Lasagne, Green salad, pasta salad and cake.

They had a  drawing for several door prizes, I did not win any though. But Jan and I had a wonderful time.

Good Night all.

C U Manana

Well, I've been out all evening and just got in.

Time to lock the door and open a new one for tomorrow...

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