IKE

I am sure y'all have been anxious to see some pics and hear more about how we have been doing since Ike left his mark here in the Houston area. I am sure you have seen the news and therefore have seen footage of some of the destruction, especially in Galveston.
For the most part, I feel like we were pretty prepared as far as having food and water. However, I do have a list of 'Things to Do' before the next hurricane hits. Things I didn't even think about, like not being able to get ice.
We ourselves, and our neighborhood in general, took a light beating in comparison to other neighborhoods. A lot of people had roof damage, fences down, trees down etc. Our street was flooded the morning after Ike hit. But, after removing some debris from the drains, the water receded very quickly.
It is crazy to drive through some of the neighborhoods and see piles of sawed up trees and trees branches up to like 8 feet tall.
Brady has been spending a lot of time helping people clear fallen trees from their yards and off their houses. Today a group helped some people from church repair their fence. They are continuing to organize groups to go out to other wards in our Stake to help people whose homes have flooded and who still have trees and other messes to clean up.
Brady's office suffered tremendous damage. He will be working from home for a while.
Over all, things are getting better. Slowly more and more people are getting power back. In our ward, we have been helping each other out by having people with power open their homes to those still with out it for things like warm showers and laundry. We had a generator for a day that President Hansen, the mission President, and his wife brought over to us one morning, which was a life saver!!! And then we got our power back!! The whole street went nuts with joy. Everyone is just doing their best to help out and take care of each other. It is so nice.
The lakes in our neighborhood all got rather full. If you go our friends blog, Michael and Melissa, they have more pics of the flooding and stuff. Just click on their name under my family and friends list.
Another thing that has been really cool, is our stake has a network of HAM Radio operators. So, the wards have been able to report to each other and pass along info. that would have been difficult to get around with power out and cell phones down. This has been a good learning experience for them and I am sure they will be even more prepared for the next natural disaster. Or any disaster at that. Brady has his license and has been a part of it. We are looking into getting him a better radio since he just has a hand held one and sometimes he can't reach as far as he'd like.


Our street the morning after the hurricane.......flood waters almost up tho the side walk.

Look at the house across the street from us.......both of their little trees blew over, as did a lot of the little trees on our block. Ours never made it all the way down. Man, I am glad they were just baby trees that fell. We were all really lucky. Especially to not even have any other damage than this and most people lost food from the freezer and fridge.

Just one example of a huge old tree that blew over in one of the neighborhoods. The chainsaw gangs take care of these messes.

more trees...........

The missionaries have been out in their yellow shirts cleaning up and helping out all over the place. This is President Hansen and one of the Elders. They are helping clear trees from this phone line, or power line, whichever it is. Way to go missionaries!!!