Mordecai, Pete's sweet doggie (really)
Today Mary and I went to church at The Vineyard in Slidell with
Ralph and Pete. They had loud worship and a good message, but I have
not been sleeping well in the heat, so I almost fell asleep. Still,
it felt good to be in church, praise the Lord, shake some hands,
and take a drive in the fresh air.
In the afternoon we just read a little bit and I took a nap. For
dinner eight of us went to Picayune (a real town pronounced
pick-a-yoon) and ate at Ryan's ... all you can eat. One of the
guys ate six steaks! Mary and I have been able to eat gluten and
all the things we can't have at home ... we had biscuits, boston
cream pie, etc. Mary even had salad dressing and other stuff with
vinegar, and she has not had any reaction. Even last time we were
here she would not press it that far. They say Ryan's was the first
restaurant open anywhere along the gulf coast after the storm, and
in October when they opened, the wait could be over an hour just to
get in the door. The service was great, too.
We got an email from Matt today, and he gave us a mailing address.
We'll be sending that information out to all the family soon.
Funny story today ... when we went to church, I could not find my
wallet. I was really worried because we are thousands of miles
from home and my wallet has credit cards, health insurance, etc.
We went to church and hoped we'd find it when we got back to camp.
While Ralph and Pete stopped for coffee, Mary and I prayed for help
finding my wallet. But I was still worried. Engineers are trained
to consider the worst case, and I'm real good at that by nature
anyway. So we went into church, and Mary opened her backpack to
get her pen, and she handed me my wallet. How it got in there is
beyond both of us. Neither of us remembers putting it in there,
and it's not really something we are in the habit of doing. We
figured God just picked it up from wherever I dropped it, and He
put it in the backpack so we'd find it. I feel so foolish worrying
after something like this happens.
General
We are getting eaten alive by bugs! It has been real bad for me since
we got here, but for Mary it really just started today. Actually, she
woke up earlier this morning and she was shaking the whole trailer
with her scratching. (I had been through the same thing around 4 am.)
I'm scratching right now as I sit at the computer.
We have been able to eat just about anything we want. I still don't
know why I got sick a couple of days ago. But it seems likeliest that
it was some kind of dehydration. I had been drinking this gatorade-like
stuff all day, but perhaps it was too sugary. Mary also thinks I may
have used too much bug spray and it got into my system through open
bites.
Mary and I are getting in the habit of praying about everything.
We pray every night before we go to bed. We also pray whenever a
situation arises, like when I lost my wallet earlier today. We also
have devotions every morning, so we get to pray a lot.
What else ... it has been warm here. Even when it rained it just
cooled off a little. The humidity magnifies the heat. It's probably
been in the low 80s. But the trailer is much warmer. We didn't have
real electricity in here until last night, so we couldn't run the A/C.
Even after connecting, we've been afraid to run it lest we trip a
breaker, but we tried it for a few minutes today without a problem.
We think we've been getting the bug bites at night while sleeping,
so cooling it off in here may help.
