Gustav

Thanks to all of you who have been praying us through this hurricane and for your offers of assistance. It's all over now and things are fine here. There are some trees down and only about 20% of Lafayette is without power, but no major damage as far as I know at this point. I believe those north of us in Opelousas got it worse than we did, actually. One of our families there had large trees down all around their house, but no damage to the house itself. God is good. One thing - our member who is a parapalegic is without power and, since his sweat glands don't work, it's very important for him to have air conditioning. He's doing fine, though, and we expect power to be restored in the next day or so.

Here's a funny annecdote: Jerry Watson and his family came from St. Martinsville to hunker down with me in our church building (it didn't lose power). During the tempest, there were transformers blowing out around us. "Wow," Jerry said, "Did you hear that transformer pop? Let's go see!" So he stood outside the door with a couple of his older kids to watch the trees bearing down on the power line and observe the "popping 'transformer.'" Well, one of his youngest sons overheard the excitement and went to his mom to tell her, "Mom! Dad saw a Transformer! And it went 'pop!'" Then, he stuck his head out the door and said, "Be careful, Daddy!" Of course, the only kind of transformer he'd ever known was the alien species of Hollywood. How exciting! So, our hurricane party was a popping success.