Sorry for the lack of blogging. I've more or less been doing my hurricane updates elsewhere and time constraints have been blocking me out of doing all the blogging I'd otherwise love to do. But there's no way I could pass up this video of the local ABC station checking in on what Lakewood's doing for Hurricane recovery efforts.

There are those who criticized Lakewood during Katrina/Rita since we didn't uproot the seats and put in cots. And there have been some who have criticized for similar reasons this time as well. But it's worth remembering that the very first concern with Lakewood moving into the old Compaq Center was the impact it would have on parking. The church is located where people work and there's basically minimal parking at Lakewood during business hours. Certainly not enough to deal with a packed arena full of either evacuees or volunteers running a FEMA POD station. This story sheds a bit of light on that, which is good to have on record.

Still, there's been a pretty massive call for volunteers going out. I've gotten emails from the church's main mailing list, the Koinonia ministry mailing list, and even a text message from the church, which I've never gotten for anything before. And, of course, if all you can do is donate, that's welcome too.

On a personal tangent, I'm doing swell and thanks to any/all who have inquired. The homestead apparently had power back starting yesterday. I got around to heading back home last night to discover that the AC was out in my unit, though. For those of you who are familiar with Houston weather, that's a grind ... if not a health concern. So I've been holed up at the office loft for the past week. It's not a bad deal and about the only adjustment to make is that I feel like I'm in some urban yuppie island that I don't terribly fit in well with. Otherwise, everything is as good as good can be. Never been without power, only been without cable for part of two days, and I'm never late for work. My productivity is through the charts and that's even after finding more blogging time overall.

Technically, there's a curfew for midnight in Houston now. Several smaller towns still have a 9pm curfew, though. But that was the case for Wednesday's service as well and they still held it short to get folks home by 9. I visited the grocery store near home and they weren't letting folks in even before 9. With that in mind, maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm curious about Saturday service in light of this. At the close of Wednesday's service, Joel said something about seeing everyone on Sunday ... no mention of Saturday. The regular service schedule would have everyone leave in time to be home by 9, but it could just mean that the late-night stuff like Koinonia might be shelved for an extra week. I'll try to check in on that today.

Anyways, I hope all is well wherever you're reading this from. There's still some friends who live south of Houston that I owe a checkup on, so if you're among those and you're reading this, drop me a line or send me a text message.