It is just a lazy Sunday at our house. We got home late last night and are just “vegging out” today. My husband is watching the British Open, the washing machine is humming (because there were some articles of clothing which, due to the 175% humidity in Magnolia, were just too disgusting to let sit for another day in the dirty clothes basket), and I am going to try to catch up with all of you. I had a frightening moment when I checked my bloglines and it showed over 500 posts to read!!! I thought you had had some sort of writing marathon while I wasn’t looking. As it turns out my bloglines is showing everything for the past month or more. Whew!!!

The first thing I absolutely must do is testify to God’s faithfulness and goodness to us. Our younger son and his family weren’t able to go to Magnolia with us. The night before we were to leave, little H. started to run a fever. They took her to the local med. Clinic where she was diagnosed with a virus. So they decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to spread the “joy” to everyone else, and they stayed home – lots of disappointment all around. We went on because we had a bike we were delivering – and we didn’t want to disappoint the kids and grandkids altogether.

It was a gloomy day, and we drove through rain showers on the way. It wasn’t raining when we got there, so we rode bikes for a while. It was about mid-afternoon when we got the call from our son T. They had had five inches of rain since about ten in the morning, and it was still just pouring buckets. He asked us to pray that it would stop because the water was coming up in their backyard and beginning to make its way up their street (with the poor drainage that the city STILL hasn’t fixed). We began to pray hard.

A couple of hours later we called them, and it was still raining hard. They were beginning to put all the furniture up on cement blocks. Our son said if it didn’t stop very soon they would definitely have water in the house. It had risen to within about three inches of their neighbor’s house which sits just a bit lower than theirs. We felt so bad that we were too far away to be of any help.

I prayed fervently. It was hard to concentrate on anything else. Then around five o’clock I just felt a peace steal into my heart, and I knew they were going to be all right. We tried calling them, but there was no answer. We left a message and waited. T. called later in the evening and said the rain had stopped, and they were safe.

Thank You Lord!!! What an answer to prayer. They got over seven inches of rain (and it has been raining nearly every day here for the past several weeks so the ground is absolutely saturated), but it stopped short of flooding their home and their neighbor’s home. I pray that their neighbor’s will see God’s hand of protection in this.

I’m sorry to talk so much about our son’s flooding problems, but it is God’s grace and mercy I want to emphasize. There were people in other places whose streets have drainage problems, and they all flooded. Some of these poor folks have had their homes flood half a dozen times!! We are more grateful than we can possibly say. God is so very good.
My husband and I had a good time (once we knew all was well at T’s) with the kids and grandkids. We rode bikes, played games, and went to a huge place called Itz where they have a huge pizza buffet and all sorts of rides and games for the kids. The noise level is unbelievable – but they had lots of fun. We just enjoyed watching them have lots of fun.

One more thing to share in this rather long epistle before I say good-by. My youngest granddaughter is three. We were all sitting at the breakfast table when she heard my husband call me by my name – Linda. She giggled and said, “She’s not Linda. She’s Grandma.” We all took turns explaining to her that while I am her Grandma, my name is Linda. She couldn’t be convinced. My DIL very patiently tried one more time, “Grandma is your grandma, but her name is Linda.” I very helpfully added, “Yes; my name is Linda”. She turned and looked at me with a look that said are you out of your mind and declared “IT IS NOT!” It was the look that got me. There was just no way on earth she was going to believe such an outrageous lie.

Thank you all for your prayers for us. God truly, truly does hear and answer prayer.

Blessings,