The Cahill's

STEP Deployment – Flood Relief, Gainesville Tx
 
Waiting for our first assignment…….                                Issuing gloves.

Hauling out the ruins (notice Lori in the picture on the right).

One lady tires to salvage what she can…..another homeowner has to stack it in her front yard to be hauled away.

This lady directs which things to salvage and which to trash.
 
I rip out wet carpet while others clean up debris out of a yard.
 
At the end we sing and pray for the victims, trying to instill some sort of hope and sense of new beginning despite the tremendous loss. The whole deployment caused me to contemplate how quickly a lifetime can be lost. One man had a priceless stamp collection that was now all over the garage floor, muddy and ruined. Another old man had stacks of 8-track tapes and old records half of which were ruined by water. Others had little more than junk, and yet it was their life and memories. They had all traded time and effort for those things that were so quickly swept away, nothing remained to show the value of their effort. Is the foundation of our efforts on the rock of Jesus Christ and the things that last for a lifetime, or have we built up a house of human effort on the sand of worldliness. What are you trading your time here on earth for?

We have had a ton of rain this last week – so much, that the lake is way above all normal boundaries. Below is a picture of the dock…or everything on top of the dock.
 
   
Here’s a picture I took just last week – the water as it is now, would be up to the girl’s knees!
Lori, shows the entrance to the dock.

Of course, we had to take advantage of the unusual situation and had a blast swimming on the dock.

Take me out to the ball game.
Saturday we went to Arlington to celebrate Bekah’s birthday! She’s a big Ranger fan so a whole group of us went to watch a game – Rangers vs. Brewers.

     

Lori and Stacie were there too – their first baseball game!
 
Katie sat with the expert, Rachel, who could explain the game and teach her the chants.

The whole game went on with very little action, only one run scored by the opposing team about the 5th inning. Then, on the 9th everything picked up. The Brewers scored two more runs and it looked like everything was over. Then it became one of those games you only read about: It was the bottom of the ninth, the home team is trailing by three, the bases are loaded, there are two outs and two strikes – can the batter do it? Yes! Three times as a matter of fact, each batter got one man in and we had a tie game. Then the last man up to bat hits another drive into the right field, the Brewers scramble for the ball but too late! The Rangers put one more across the plate as the stands erupt – what an exciting end!

Bekah and Sam celebrate in the background.