To my friends in Winona and the surrounding communities - my heart is with you as the rain continues...I pray for God's protection and for energy that you will need to clean up after this disaster.

Note for those of you who met Pete's best man Jerod from the wedding...he's okay. Pete said that he live inland from where the flooding is and he was out and about last night looking at the flooded areas.

I typically love rain but not when causes so many problems.

Just got done with our soggy food drive. It was highly successful. I have to admit I was pretty cynical towards the whole thing. I really love what they do at the food shelf and it's a neat place but I really didn't think we'd get that many participants...people donate to different causes all the time what would make them support this one?

God moved in the hearts of these people - that's for sure.

Of course for me it wasn't without a few traumas along the way...at the second house I stopped at suddenly I could not get my rear door to close at all...the mechanism was stuck open and so I had to call my brother Pete and he talked me through fixing my car...so God bless Pete for being home and having the right answer...of course at the time it was POURING rain so I became a drowned rat before I even started...

One of the few houses where there was people actually outside must have thought I was a lunatic coming to swipe something from their porch. They were watching football in the garage and I just said - "Hey there, thanks for participating in the food drive - I'm just going to pick up the bag from your porch" and the guy actually walked me to my car to make sure I was legit.

All in all it was a good time...although I will say that it was a lot more fun to put the bags out with a partner (Sarah) than picking them up by myself...it was very hard to drive and look through the rain for these little cub bags stop the car, hop out, hop in...drive some more...but alas, again in comparison to being wet and losing a house or life like those in the winona area...we are very blessed indeed.

There was one last house that so completely irritated me...they took our little cub bag, filled it with a can of tuna and a whole bunch of paper towels to poof it up and also filled it with dog poo and left that on their stoop. WHY? Why would you do something like that? Just don't participate.

I was so dejected as I pulled away from the curb. And then I got perspective. Sure there were a whole lot of houses that did not participate. One who made a statement in contrast to the very generosity of all these neighbors is something to be sad about but it shouldn't taint the whole day. And as I pulled out of the neighborhood...something made me turn up the radio and it was Chris Tomlin...how great is our God...and that about sums it up :)