A day of service and the blessing of electricity

Today began with a call from Jane Packer. Her condo's driveway was blocked by a huge tree and she was wondering if Greg could come cut it up. He said of course--happy to get to play, I mean use, his chainsaw. All of us loaded up in the truck and we were off.

It was a pretty big tree.

Greg cut...
and cut...
and we hauled branches off of the driveway.

It was a pretty big job, but we made good time and soon their driveway was clear. Some of the residents asked Jane how much Greg was going to charge them for his services. She just laughed and said she was sure they could afford him.

After we were finished at the condo, we drove over to Huntwick to see what that neighborhood looked like. It was so much worse than ours. Trees were down all over, with some streets still blocked by big ones. We drove around to check out the Aitkens. Their house was fine, but their neighbor across the street had a big tree fall on to their garage. It didn't look good for their cars. As we were circling the neighborhood, we had a woman stop her car by us, get out and ask if we had a chain saw. Greg said yes, and she explained that she had a tree fall on the back of her house and had been bailing buckets of water all night. She then begged us to come help her. So we followed her home and went to check it out. Greg thought it looked like something he could handle, so he proceeded to cut away the branches that had gone through the roof. He left the rest of the tree for her to have a professional take care of, and then we tarped the hole in her roof to try to keep the water out. She was so grateful she was nearly in tears. She offered to pay us and we told her no. As we were leaving she tried to put money into Greg's hand. He told her that the only payment that was needed was that the next time LDS missionaries came to her house she had to invite them in and give then something to drink. He assured her she didn't have to listen to their message if she wasn't interested, but just let them cool off a bit. She agreed. It is so tempting to call the missionaries to send them over to her house. But we'll probably resist. We were just happy we were able to help her.

We spent most of the rest of the day at home, hoping the electricity would come back on. We were still cycling the generator--4 hrs on and 4 hrs off. It was a little warm, but cooler than a typical September in Houston so it was manageable. We ran some fans when the generator was going.

We also spent a lot of time playing games, and even had some company when Cory Martin and Cody Corrington came over and played Risk.

But the best part of Sunday came that evening, when our electricity came back on. We turned on the AC and cooled down the house. Hurray! It wasn't out long, but I am sure grateful it's back!