All is well at the Garner’s! 

We woke up Sunday morning to find the water completely receded from the yard, and our little dock nestled up against the bulkhead, secured by only one pole, but floating within the other two poles, perfectly corralled.  We just don’t see this as a coincidence, it was too perfectly placed!  

The winds which never reached anything close to hurricane level, still managed to bring down a lot of smaller branches and so there was some sawing and chopping and raking that had to be done.  We never lost power, so we never had to delve into our emergency stock of dried lentils, dried fruit, peanut butter, tuna and water!  I suppose I know what Grace and I will be eating for lunch the next few weeks! 

Our church had cancelled Sunday worship earlier in the week, so we did some mild straightening up.  The front porch furniture was stacked in the foyer, so we put the porch back together, moved the potted plants back to their spots, swept, sawed, and raked some. We checked on our neighbors and they checked on us.  Then we spent the afternoon taking it easy, enjoying the sun, the blue sky, the water (staying nicely within its assigned boundaries!) thanking God, and reflecting on our many blessings!

We are back to school and really enjoying learning more about the Pacific Islands.  Grace’s favorite book is “Torches of Joy,”  a book about John and Helen Dekker, missionaries to the stone-age Toli tribe in Irian Jaya in the 1960’s.  I pre-read everything in her reading list before it’s assigned, and I enjoyed it very much, but I didn’t think she would.  I’m delighted to be wrong!