Over halfway in our time here at Newton

Weekend of November 21 – I am sorry I haven’t been paying attention to our blog as I intended to – this is really late (finished on December 1st)

Len and Nettie invited us to go on a “southern tour” with them on Friday. We left at 8:00 a.m. Beaumont was our first stop, then we headed for Port Arthur. We could see hurricane damage all along the highway – blue tarps on a lot of roofs, uprooted trees and damaged signs. Although we had been through Johnson Bayou on our trip down here, they wished to see the damage Ike did for themselves, so we headed for Johnson Bayou. Along the Gulf Beach Highway where there used to be beautiful “dream homes’, there were damaged homes and some that were completely gone.

We reached Johnson Bayou and were pleased to find owner Tim Trahan working at the RV Park where we stayed in January and February this year. We had become good friends in the two months we had been there and he was delighted to see us. We heard more stories about the hurricanes, and again we heard “We just didn’t think it was going to be that bad!” Several of his family lost their homes altogether, and his brand new home in Bridge City had 4 feet of water in it. He’s just trying to carry on as if he’s in his right mind… What else can you do?

We then drove up to Sulphur and had lunch and headed home through Merryville. It was a nice way to spend the day.

Saturday, my new friend, Patty (aka cat lady) was having a garage sale and I had seen a “wine table” she was going to sell so I wanted to get there before someone else bought it. It’s a beauty and is just what we needed for the RV! I stayed and visited a while and then went back later to see how it was going. It wasn’t, so I helped pack up her stuff.

Sunday morning we all decided to go to the church of Sandron, the lady who had sung on Thursday night at the Bible Encampment. She was awesome. Her congregation was awesome. There were several from the regular MDS unit who attended as well, about 18 of us in total, and we just about equaled the rest of the people there. Their church service was not “over and above” what we expected, but it was 2 hours and as John said, the preacher did not disappoint his expectation of a traditional Black service. Sandron was SO excited that we all came, and she said the Lord had told her when she got up, “The Mennonites are coming”, so she and her mother got a feast ready for lunch for all of us after church. What a lady! We had a great day.