Hello everyone. As most of you know we were not affected by the flooding. We really had no idea how bad it was until the afternoon (the Levee broke at 4AM). To see the footage from the air of 300 plus homes (with our neighbors and friends in them) surrounded by deep water was shocking to say the least. Three different families that we know well had severe damage. One of them is Abigail's preschool teacher. We are all so sad. Friends of ours from church had a basement that was completely filled with water-I mean-up to the top floor. They have been pumping water out all day. Another couple from church with 3 young children had about a foot of water in their home. They, like almost everyone involved, had no flood insurance but came to Church today thankful that it wasn't worse. I am amazed at the courage of these guys. Interestingly our Sunday school study was on Psalm 145.
Ps 145:8
The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy.
Ps 145:9
The Lord is good to all, And His tender mercies are over all His works.
I would expect people in this situation to question these verses. But they didn't. They were thankful to be dry and to have shelter, their family, a steady job with an understanding boss, and the provision for the day. We then went over the words of Jesus:
Mt 5:45"...for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.We are all subject to both the blessings and pitfalls of God's awesome creation. But as Christians they have precious promises:Ps 145:18
The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.
Ps 145:19
He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He also will hear their cry and save them.
Ps 145:20
The Lord preserves all who love Him, But all the wicked He will destroy.
The sermon today was about Psalm 91Ps 91:9
Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place,
Ps 91:10
No evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
Ps 91:15
He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him.
Praise God our true dwelling place is our Lord! Did I ever mention that I love our Church? :)
I will try to update the blog with pics of the kiddos and our trip to Salt Lake soon. I am so grateful to have the ability to do that at all, when I think of the people that lost their family albums and computers completely. Just about everything that I am able to do seems more precious but I don't think either Erik or I will be comfortable enjoying anything until our neighbors are recovered from this terrible situation.
Here are some pics of our trip to Salt Lake over Christmas. The children's museum is awesome! If we lived there we would go every week. The kiddos are doing great. Abigail is smart as a whip and is starting to ask questions about Jesus all day. "Why can't we see Jesus?" "Did Jesus make my.....(random object)?" When she gets frightened she says things like "Jesus protects us, he won't let anything b
ad happen to us." 
Sam is now the one that gets comments from people about his vocabulary. He talks to Abigail and I all day. Just now I changed his diaper and said "Eew your stinky Sam!" To which he responded "I nah steeky, er steeky!" No, I am not exagerrating! Every day he says something else like that which is just way beyond what he should be saying. For that I will have to give the credit to Abigail. She coaches him all day on his responses to common things that we say. She tells him "Say (random phrase) Sam" and he repeats it. She corrects him too. He really is just a joy. Still full of smiles and fun.
Christmas Day at the Sittners is super fun. They always make it extra special. We had a great time with everyone. I am always amazed at what a neat day Christmas is at their house.
Erik and I are well. We just finished our Foster Care Training and are collecting the necessary paperwork to start our homestudy. We are both so excited and anxious to be licensed. Even after we are we probably won't have the possibility of adopting for a year or so because our age range is so small and specific (0-3 with strong possiblity of adoption) but we will probably do Emergency care for awhile. Either way, we are both certain that this is something we want to do long term when our nuclear family is a little older. It is just heartbreaking the situations some of the families here are in.
Here are some pics of some houses in the flood zone. Some of the cars you see were stuck in the water and were towed away shortly after these pics. This whole week has been spent emptying out homes of everything and piling obvious losses on the front lawns. There were some great people just going up and down the streets every day with trailors gathering people's things and hauling them to the dumpsters provided by the city. Some "PODS" were donated to many people which are on front lawns so that people could store whatever was salvageable. For some that was very little. Then everyone had to rip out all flooring which was quite a task because it was all saturated with mud. Then people started ripping out their walls-all of them. That means pulling out all the kitchen cabinets, bathroom sinks and tubs, and anything else to get the walls out. Some people donated these huge blow dryers to people and that is what is going on now for the most part. It is going to take days to dry everything out. 
