I am copying for you my orginal journal entries about Rita and my experiences.\r\n\r\nIn the Path of Rita 9/22/05\r\nYes, we ARE in the path of Rita as of Thursday afternoon. We are inland, but may get hurricane force winds. We have supplies. We are staying. Please say prayers for us and the entire Texas Gulf Coast area! I\'ll be mostly offline before the storm to leave my telephone open. May be without electricity for some time afterwards......so don\'t get anxious! I\'ll be back to give a word of how we faired as soon as it\'s over and we have electricity and phone service! \r\n\r\nAlive & Well!!!! 10/06/05\r\nJust to let everyone know we are alive and well. No damage to our house. Still no lights, phone, etc. But I did come back to work yesterday. Will be back with lots of new stories as soon as I can use my own pc/internet connection. Thank everyone for your prayers and well wishes. God DID watch over us! (Turned out later, after we registered with FEMA we had water spots and mold start to appear on our ceiling. Hubby thinks the rain was coming at such a hard slant that it actually blew inbetween the roofing on the trailer.)\r\n\r\nI love you folks!! 10/13/05\r\nWhat a wonderful, wonderful welcome!!! Thanks to each and every one of you! God is so good and He does answer prayer!\r\n\r\nOur electricity was restored on Saturday finally! My hats off to the guys from Georgia that went thru a swamp to get us hooked up! Over 50,000 have come to our area to help with electrical restoration from all over the US of A.\r\n\r\nMy phone worked after an SBC fellow came thru this morning. So now I finally have internet access at home!!! You know what that means.....I\'ll soon be posting again! A series of Storm Stories are coming. \r\n(We lost electricity the night of the 22nd at about 9:00pm CST. Before we got anything major. Notice it was 3 weeks before we had it back. And from the damages to the infrastructure I don\'t know how they accomplished that.)\r\n\r\nStorm Stories - Thursday, the day before Rita 10/16/05 \r\nI want to take you back in time to Thursday evening, Sept. 22nd. Rita was still a catogory 4 hurricane......the strongest ever on record in the Gulf waters. Most were still uncertain of an exact place of landfall, but it was continually narrowing in on the Beaumont/Sabine Pass region. I had signed on to post that I would probably not be available for some time (I thought 3 days to one week.) I decided to go ahead and peek in on what the AOL weather had to say. There I found an advisory issued that made my blood run cold. It stated that if she kept her current strength, Rita would cause flooding up to I-10....which runs through the center of Beaumont. Okay. I\'m North of that. The part that got me was predictions that as far inland as 100 miles, 1/3 of ALL TREES would snap in to or be layed over by the winds! People, there is no place apart from trees in our area. Too late to run. No where much to hide. I\'ll just keep this to myself. No need to alarm my household.\r\n\r\nI noticed I had received an e-mail, and I thought \"Why not just see what it was.\" It was from my friend and sister in Christ, Trish. It was a hurricane prayer! It mentioned the calming of the Sea of Galilee and put in my mind the many other times God stepped in to intervene in natural occurances. Peace replaced the cold blood in my veins.\r\n\r\nAs a quirky side note, on Thursday afternoon, Pete found a baby gator under his shed! Now if you go back in the bottoms, sometimes you run across one here.....but this ain\'t Florida folks. They don\'t just wonder across your yard here! He searched diligently for a Mama.....no sign of one. So, we placed the little mad fellow in a wire cage and made him a guest.\r\n\r\nThere is more to come about the peace of Christ in the midst of a storm, the power of a prayer, and the faithfulness to do what God is leading you to do, no matter how small it seems. But that was Friday.....actually the wee hours of Saturday....as we huddled and watched and rode out the worst thing any one of any age can remember in these parts.\r\n\r\nKFDM - Local station with news of how things are in our area and a Rita Photo gallery.\r\n\r\nToday I leave you with a copy of sister Trish\'s prayer. \r\n\r\n I would like to share this prayer that I found today for our nation during this hurricane season. May God bless each of you and keep you and your families safe. Hugs, Trish :) P.S. Barbara I am praying for you and your family. Let us know how you are when you can. God bless you We love you. :) O God, Master of this passing world, hear the humble voices of your children. The Sea of Galilee obeyed your order and returned to its former quietude; you are still the Master of land and sea. We live in the shadow of a danger over which we have no control. The Gulf, like a provoked and angry giant, can awake from its seeming lethargy, overstep its conventional boundaries, invade our land and spread chaos and disaster. During this hurricane season, we turn to You, O loving Father. Spare us from past tragedies whose memories are still so vivid and whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with the passing of time. Father, all the elements of nature obey your command. Calm the storms and hurricanes that threaten us and turn our fear of your power into praise of your goodness. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Father God I am so very grateful that You are all knowing and all things have to submit to You. I pray Lord God for mercy for these in the hurricane areas. Father I pray that we as a nation of people will once again turn to You and say You are God! \r\nFather I pray for good to come out of all this devastation. I pray for souls to be saved, I pray for spiritual health of this nation and the world. I pray we will lift Your name on high and put Jesus back on the throne instead of all our other gods we have tried to put on His throne. \r\nMay our people and our nation be healed and back under Your protection Father God. In Jesus name. I pray we completely surrender to You and spare ourselves from more destruction. Amen! \r\n\r\nThen shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. Jeremiah 29:12 \r\n\r\nStorm Stories - Friday of the Big Night 10/19/05\r\n \r\nFriday was just another hot/humid Southeast Texas day. Everywhere there were updates on Rita. Updates on evacuation routes, school closings, etc. Our own children had been released from school on Wednesday, as we lie along the evacuation route for Jefferson County and they didn\'t want the buses cutting back and forth through that mess. And of course there was always the possiblity we\'d get a mandatory evacuation order. And we did. But sorry Charlie, this is a day late and a dollar short! Absolutely no funds for motel rooms. All our friends and family either were also in the path or lived so far away we\'d never be able to buy the gas to get there. \r\n\r\nSo, we made plans. Smart plans we thought. I put changes of clothing for everyone in three seperate locations outside the main house. I put boxes of canned food and a jug of water in each of these also. Surely at least one would survive. We filled jugs with water and both bathtubs. \r\n\r\nWe saw that we might run out of a few things before places opened back up. We expected everything to be down and at a standstill for 3-5 days. (Yeah, that\'s the Lord you hear laughing.) So, thankfully we had backroads we could run to the closest feed store where I got extra milk, bread, feed, canned drinks, etc. I started supper and we began to turn the kitchen into our \"safe place.\" We chose the kitchen as it is part of the main house, not the trailer add on. There would be three ways to get out of it if we needed to. Also, we have a solid wood dining table there with a top that is about 1 1/2\" thick. We would put pallets under there to sleep. Our heads and torsos would have that extra layer of protection. \r\n\r\nPete and Bubba turned all the horses loose and put the gaps up across the road and the pipeline. He figured they would cause damage and hurt theirselfs if they were trapped in a pen or stall when things got spooky. \r\n\r\nWell, wouldn\'t you know it, we lost our phone and electricity around 9:00 pm! Before anything to speak of had started ! That\'s what happens when your lines run through a pipeline in the midst of the Piney Woods. All it takes is one large tree limb to give way. So we lit the hurricane lamp and finished our supper. \r\n\r\nThe rough stuff seemed to begin around midnight. We all sat on our porch which opens into the kitchen with the door open. Wondered what the night would bring. The winds steadily increased. It drove the rain parallel to the ground. With no artifical light, it was next to impossible to see what was going on. But from the glow of the oil lamp you could tell the large cedar tree by the house was bending nearly double and slapping the tin roof of the porch.\r\n\r\nThis was solid, steady wind....ever increasing from midnight on. The kids finally gave in and lay down. Managed to \"catnap.\" We heard the tin on Pete\'s shop shudder and rumble, like it was about to leave.....but it never did.\r\n\r\nI finally was exhausted and lay down. Nothing approaching real sleep. Each time things sounded really bad, I sang a verse of \"Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee.\" and reflected on the prayer Trish had sent. It brought instant relief. Bug seemed to appreciate it. And maybe even Pete did, as he didn\'t tell me to hush! lol (Don\'t judge him harshly if you\'ve never heard me sing!)\r\n\r\nFrom 2:00 am on things really intensified. Occasionally you could smell the scent of pine strong in the air and you knew a tree had given way and breathed a sigh of relief it wasn\'t on the house. There were sounds of things bouncing off the walls outside. Even sounds like things blowing through underneath as the home sits up on blocks! Twice we heard the \"train\" sound of a tornado. But you could just barely make it out over the sound of the constant, steady pounding winds! As 5:00 am rolled around you could tell that things were abating and we began to give a sigh of relief through thankful hearts. \r\n\r\nPete said he prayed that night like he never had before. I never had the fear I thought I would have. But each hug, from each dear one in our home that morning did seem extra special.\r\n\r\nStorm Stories - There\'s Got to be a Morning After 10/22/05\r\nRemember that song from the Posiden Adventure? That is very appropriate to how we felt in the wee hours just before dawn. As we stepped out onto the porch, the first thing we noticed was a profusion of green. Now we had been long not having any rain, so this wasn\'t grass......it was branches and leaves from the trees! Several inches thick across the whole yard. Our eyes instinctively went up to the horizon, where we saw our whole view had changed overnight! Where there had been trees so thick in the edge of the woods you couldn\'t see between them, there were now spaces of light cascading in. One third to half of the leaves on every tree had been stripped from their limbs! Trees still green with no sign of autumn upon them. Trees that are evergreen. All the trees. \r\n\r\nMany trees had blown down. Thankfully none on any structure! Although one very old shed did blow off it\'s flooring. Funny that all the things inside the shed were sitting on that bare floor, totally unhurt!? One tree did crash upon an old truck, a junker. It was easy to tell the ones that Rita got by the sheer force of her winds from the ones the tornadoes took. Those downed by Rita all lay in a straight line, roots to the North, tops toward the South. Odd isn\'t it how something blowing in from the South, spun those trees down from whence she came?! That circular motion just ain\'t nothin\' like a Blue Norther blowing in. These trees were either broken off about a foot from the ground in a clean break or had went over pulling up their entire root system with them. Those that met their fate at the hand of the tornadoes were harshly twisted off midway up, some still hanging, and strown around all askew.\r\n\r\nThe green, the view, then you notice the entense quiet! Like when you are somewhere remote in the cold. No road noise from anywhere. No animal sounds. I have never experienced an outside world so quiet. I wondered if that is how it was right after God made the Heavens and the Earth and before He started on all the creeping things upon the face of the earth. \r\n\r\nEverything, every where looked brighter and cleaner. Especially the horses! Wow! They all shone in the dim morning light like new copper pennies. We joked about God\'s high pressure washer. \r\n\r\nThere was one dead chicken....otherwise the horses, the hogs, the dogs, the cats and the poultry were all alive and well. Even the monsterous little gator! We live in a very good place as far as standing water goes, so we had none on the ground anywhere. But our pond that had been almost a scummy mudhole the day before was full and overflowing into the marshy place behind it. And all of that stood with water.\r\n\r\nWe first got out the butane cooker and drip coffee pot and made us some coffee on the porch. We pulled my car up to try to get some reports on the radio, but it was hard and sketchy, as most all local stations had sustained damage, and the ones near enough to hear like Houston, were pretty much cut off from our area and had nothing to report on. \r\n\r\nLater, Pete and Bubba walked through the pipeline to check on his brother\'s house. (They had been fortunate to be invited by friends to go to Oklahoma.) There was a tree down there on their master bedroom. The guys went on to check on Pete\'s sisters house, which sustained only minor damage. Our pastor lives across the street from her and they found him out serveying the damage to his property, and feeling very trapped by all the emensly large trees fell over the road. Just a tangle of trees!\r\n\r\nPete later tried going down our road in the truck, to check the damage in that direction. He could not get far, but was able to observe that our neighbors homes were standing. \r\n\r\nWe were hot and sticky and miserable. That Texas humid heat had not abated one bit! Way later in the evening, after one of our neighbors who had left came in and over to visit, we all loaded up in the truck to get a look down our rural road. Our neighbor had cut a pig trail through the debris just large enough for a truck to fit through. We were constantly driving over power lines, but as everything was as quiet as it was, we figured the nearest live wire had to be miles and miles away. When we saw we could make it all the way down our little road to the blacktop, Pete said we\'d ride down and check on my sister Edna. She and her husband had also elected to ride out the storm. Maybe in part from stubborness, part ignorance, and in large part not to desert their livestock......horses and cows. \r\n\r\nLow and behold, as we snake our way through the cut out trees on the road, we see them headed toward us in their truck. My heart felt a burden I hadn\'t realized was there lift off! (See, she\'s all I have left of my original family unit. Just nephew, nieces, cousins and a scattered aunt or two besides her.) They had done and decided the same as we. So we just stopped there in the road and had a tailgate reunion. Plenty of hugs and damage reports. They had somehow had a good bit of water come in their home, that they mopped up in the middle of the night! lol Think most of it blew in under the window sill!!\r\n\r\nThen the trip back to the house and a lot of hard work, figuring out how we\'re goin\' to get water to the animals, get clean, stay cool, etc. etc. \r\n\r\nI\'ll be continueing with different tales of how we coped. Just let me tell you all right now, if you are going to be affected by a natural disaster you need either a very wealthy man who can just wisk you away to a luxurious vacation while the peons fix your home OR a wonderfully ingenious redneck jack-of-all trades husband like my Pete! Doesn\'t hurt if he\'s a pack rat that never throws any tool, object, motor, etc. away either. ;)\r\n\r\n\r\nStorm Stories: Getting the Necessities 10/30/05\r\nSo the first few days is a time of absorbing all that has changed, praising God for all that remains, and working toward taking what you have to get what you need. \r\n\r\nNecessities really do come first. And of all that is necessary, water cetainly tops the list! Sure, there is plenty in that overflowing pond for the horses that are free to roam and the chickens lose on the ground. But what of the Stud horse, DBoy, in the pen? The three hogs in their pen? The dogs that live in a pen or are chained up here and there? And especially, us?! Thankfully, Pete had accepted as trade in some deal or the other an old prehistoric generator. He and Bubba got it to run after a little tinkering and a lot of sweat! But the darned old thing didn\'t push enough juice to run the pump. However it did push just enough juice to run the compressor that brings the water out of the ground and into the holding tank! (See, the pump just sends it through the pipes into the house.) So, battle half won. How do we get the water out of the tank? You don\'t. You turn the pipe from the well to the tank around, put a turndown on it, and fill Bugs plastic wading pool! Hurrah! With a strapping teenage Bubba around, you dip that out with a 5 gal bucket and distribute it to all the animals. Mom fills every pitcher and milk jug around for our drinking, cooking, etc. THEN, you take turns getting in the pool to cool off and clean up. And it is so icy cold, thank you Jesus!\r\n\r\nWell, Mama enjoyed it quite a bit, but then again I am a 45 year old woman, if you know what I mean. And Bug took to it pretty good too....just another day in the pool to her. But the guys had a little problem with it. Something to do with their plumbling, apparently.\r\n\r\nNext on the list, how to eat. That\'s not too hard for folks who dear camp every year with none of the modern conveniences.....except all our stuff is in the deer camp. Would probably take Pete and Bubba a week to get there and back through all the downed trees. Well, there is the butane burner. And Pete keeps a fire hole dug out all year and has a grill on a swivel above it. Don\'t know how soon we can get more butane, but the Lord has given us an abundance of firewood! So you do what you can slowly over the fire and the rest on the cooker. And at first you eat fairly good. Got lots of stuff to eat on before it rots. \r\n\r\nLet\'s see....water, food, and the third necessity, shelter. That little front that turned Rita away from Galveston held us with clear skies. And our long dry spell left us with no mosquitoes, at first. But the heat is something awful. Thank God for shade! And did we ever chase it, all day, from one spot to another in the yard. At night we went in the house and all slept on pallets on the living room floor. This is so we could all get the benefit of one small little fan that Pete took out of an old van and mounted to the window-sil. Pull the truck up to the window and hook the fan wires to the battery and you have cool evening air blowing across you.\r\n\r\nNow, gradually, things improved in each of the three areas. Pete got an old bathtub and cleaned it up. Set it out near the firehole. Then each evening he\'d heat a couple of large pans of water over the fire and pour into the tub to cut the chill and warm the well water. We took turns as to whose night was first in the tub. (Come on, someone out there has surely bathed in a number three washtub?! ) You washed your hair on your night to be first.\r\n\r\nEventually the food in the freezers was all beyond consumption and MRI\'s and canned soups and Chef Boy\'r\'d type meals became the standard fare. It took about 5 days for FEMA and the National Guard to get setup and distributing food, water and ice in our area. Oh, how we celebrated to have ice!!! A cold drink of water. An icy jug of koolaide!\r\n\r\nAnd our nighttime hours got a little better once Pete\'s cousin relented and let him borrow another small generator that he uses to light his wagon when he rides at night. With it, we could have 8-9 hours of a large box fan in the window running and even watch an hour or two of the Western Channel on satellite! Yippee!\r\n\r\nThus was our lives for two weeks. Next installment I\'ll begin to share some side stories with you. And, sorry Mary, no pictures. We aren\'t the kind to always keep a camera around loaded.....and the nearest store up and running was probably two hours away. By the time there was a place you could get a camera or film, there just wasn\'t the same pictures with the same feel to be had.\r\n\r\nStorm Stories: Glimpses from the Heart 11/04/05\r\n Today I want to share some glimpses into the heart with you. Share some things people actually did in and around our area for one another in the wake of Rita. Large things, simple things. Most I believe for altruistic reasons, but some may have been with motives to promote themselves. But God is amazing and can use even those actions to benefit others! \r\nLocal News Anchors and radio personalities, some who stayed during the storm, some who evacuated and came right back. They went into studios that had suffered damage. They ran on generators, in the heat, to broadcast out local news and helpful information. They searched and they researched. They connected us. Some still return home at the end of the day to homes with blue roofs and no cable.\r\n\r\nThe Hardin County Sheriff\'s Dept., who responded to call after call. Who helped many who had no way to help themselves. Elderly people who needed ice for their meds. Older folks who needed a hot meal. People who needed gas to run their generators and even help cranking them.\r\n\r\nFEMA, the National Guard and the Red Cross, who tirelessly handed out meals, ice and water each day of the week. In heat, in misquitos. Away from their own homes and families.\r\n\r\nMario Gonzales, Pete\'s cousin who brought in gasoline for the ambulance service to run on. Who parked a large BBQ cooker in the parking lot of a destroyed convenience store. Organized volunteers to keep it going.....cooking and handing out hot plate lunches to anyone who stopped by. Fed an awful lot of the folks who were in the area to help us. As frozen meat became defrosted, people dropped off their items, the food was cooked and passed out. Waste not, want not they say.\r\n\r\nThe woman who phoned a radio show to say that she was caring for survivors in her home and didn\'t have enough water. Was asking did they think it would be alright for her to go over to her neighbors pool and dip out water for flushing comodes, etc. This is respect of others and their belongings.\r\n\r\nMy husband, Pete, who went from house to house down our road switching people\'s water pumps that were wired for 220 and no good with their generator, over to 110 so they could have water in their homes. \r\n\r\nThose neighbors who opened their homes to me to use their phones that did work or their washers that were ran by generators.\r\n\r\nOur own family. My sister and husband who loaded us down with koolaid and sugar, brought us gas when it wasn\'t plentiful. Pete\'s siblings that brought ice when it was hard for us to get and food and other supplies.....sharing out of what they had received.\r\n\r\nThe business I work for, that opened the doors to their undamaged location to allow displaced workers to shower and sleep there. Who cooked and fed every worker and anyone else who stopped in every day for a week. Who brought each worker in one by one to help them get on the internet and register with FEMA.\r\n\r\nThe many men who left home and family to come help restore our infrustructure. They worked incredible long days for weeks. Ate as we did. Slept in tents at old fair grounds and rodeo arenas. \r\n\r\nThe many companies, who forgave monthy payments for a month or even three so folks could get their feet back under them.\r\n\r\nThe list goes on and on. I could never mention them all. But you get the idea. Folks helping folks and doing what had to be done. \r\n\r\nThere is a lot of talk and books and such around these days about angels. People seem to think that angels are something spectacular. Actually they are God\'s go-fors. I believe in them. But the amazing, the brillant thing of God is that His Spirit indwells all who believe in Christ. That ever since the assension of Christ, God\'s preferred method of delivering help and aid is us. Ordinary, extra-ordinary, people.\r\n\r\nToday 06/19/05\r\nIn retrospect I believe the events of Rita and the aftermath, put a stress, strain and unbelief, bewilderment in many people. Especially the aged. It seemed to sap their strength. I saw many, including my own step father, go downhill after this storm. And eventually pass on. It\'s my firm belief they were victims of Rita, just as those who died trying to fix their homes, take care of needs directly afterward and those who lost their lives as she blew through.