I dont like Ike. At all.

I cant sleep. It's like 330 saturday morning. I think the eye of Ike is passing over Galveston right about now, and I can't help but feel sick inside for the people who chose not to evacuate. I served my LDS mission in Houston, and spent a lot of time in Galveston itself, as it was part of my zone. I actually had knee surgery in Galveston while on my mission. I spent even more time (8 months) in smaller, lower-lying communities to the north and west of Galveston. Places like Port LaVaca and Palacios. Places right on the gulf, where people live in trailers. I truly fear for those places, especially because there are so many people still there who I love deeply. I feel so disconnected from them, and truly don't feel like there is anything I can do. I wish I was there to help them. In Clearlake, where NASA is, I hear the mayor is urging people even now to evacuate low lying areas. I know those areas. One apartment complex in clearlake called Harbor Tree used to flood with even the mildest of summer rainstorms. We would walk through it wet to our knees after a storm. Every stairway was rusted up to the third or fourth step. I feel sick for what they must be going through now.

For those of you who have never lived or seen that area of Texas, it is truly beautiful. Palacios is a tiny shrimping village, flat land, baptist churches, mostly gravel roads. The kind of place that hasn't changed in fifty years. Some of the happiest moments of my life were spent there teaching and serving people. We would drive our car out to the most remote of places, tiny colonies of trailers twenty miles away from anywhere, huddled around a small water tower. I remember one time we were on a drive like that, looking for a country road address and we came across a historical site/marker. It said that there had once been a city on that spot, settled before houston, that rivaled it in size and commerce, but that hurricanes had leveled it twice and the settlers had just given up. I stood at that marker and realized without nostalgia just how extreme Texas can be. I only pray now that destruction escapes most, but especially the ones I love and have left behind.