Rita

[Sherry]

My BIL & family had to leave town, as they live at the Houston-Clear Lake line.

My DH just took off with some church friends to go be a relief driver for other friends coming up from Houston with a group of NO evacuees. They have been driving since 10 last night, going mostly about 20 mph. There are lots of wrecks with all the sleepy drivers, so this group from Dallas hopes to meet up with the north-bound group around Waco, & get them all up here safely.

Sherry

[GMan]

I have been following this closely. I just got off the phone from a friend of mine, who happens to live in Abilene, his wife just had a massive heart attack. I also had friends scheduled to arrive from Houston tomorrow, but haven't heard anything as of yet.

This coming on the tails of Katrina, where I have many friends working on the clean up and restoration of the areas hit, not only the physical needs of rebuilding, but also the physical needs of the body and soul.

[MacSimoin]

...but also the physical needs of the body and soul.

Macsim managed to update me with an email last evening---I hope he doesn't mind but I'll post what he had to say:

I'm in MS right now, just taking a moment to check my mail. We're getting a lot of donations of food and clothing here in Vancleave so I would think they'd be happy to get stuff. Maybe the thing to do is to hook up with a church like this one. They are really the ones on the front lines. We're getting to people that otherwise have no help. Some of these folks literally lost everything. Looks like there will be more opportunities with Rita bearing down on us. I just hope we don't get caught in the mass exodus. Highway 10 is only 2 lanes and that's the major route out of here. We came in on back roads so I hope we'll make it okay. We're not leaving until Saturday...Thanks for the prayers. We have felt them. Things have worked out in so many ways for us down here and it has been a true blessing to be able to help out. Well, I need to run. Talk to you next week!

As with the friends of Gman who are helping out their fellow Americans during this tragedy, I feel it necessary to point out that it's the selfless nature of some of our own "Xmarkers" that keep me coming to this site. I'm proud to know Macsim and though we've yet to meet in person (he's a mod at our clann's site forums), I happily call him friend.