galveston church still devastated by ike

First Latin Assemblies of God

First Latin Assemblies of God is a church in Galveston that is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Ike.  It doesn’t look like this church structure will be rebuilt any time soon.

After the pastor of the church heard what God was doing in rebuilding Primera, the pastor called Tim for help.  Tuesday a week ago, Tim and Eddie went to check out the church.  The damage to the structure was extensive.  Eddie estimated the cost to repair it all would be about $100,000 just for materials.  The church building is old; even the bricks need new mortar between them.  The church is in a tough situation, since they don’t have the funds to rebuild.  The city has offered them $18,000 to buy out the building.  Is that really all it’s worth at this point? 

It is tough to see a sanctuary dedicated to God continue to lie in ruins.  I’m not sure where the church’s congregation currently pays another A of G church for space to meet.  We’ve seen the pattern repeatedly in Galveston- small churches that are just struggling to survive who are unable to repair their building without assistance.  The congregation has enough to worry about repairing their own homes.  Perhaps God will provide in some miraculous way for them.  Perhaps he is moving them on to somewhere else.  For us though, it would be incredibly difficult to do anything to make a real difference in rebuilding the church.  It is hard to admit that we can’t do anything about the situation.  We will continue to pray for this congregation, that God would reveal what he has in store for them and guide them along the journey.    

Donated pews from Moody Methodist

Ceiling falling down

No walls

Bathroom

Main area

Rooms

Stairs

Ceiling

Eddie examines the floors

Another shot of the pews

Bricks needing new mortar

Fear

Hurricane season has started again this year – and it has been accompanied by much fear here in Galveston.  Pastors and parishioners alike have been wondering if oen oft he 14 named storms that are supposed to enter the Gulf this year will come towards Galveston.  We prayed in church today for the people who would be affected by hurricanes and asking the Lord to protect everyone from the destruction that hurricanes bring with them.  There is a lot of fear in Galveston and Houston about when the next hurricane will hit.

update on joe and gloria

Joe and Gloria

Thursday night, Joe and Gloria took us out to dinner at Fish Tales.  We had a great time catching up with them.  They have settled into their home and keep busy with children and grandchildren coming in and out on a regular basis.  Gloria has also started working again at UTMB – however, it is taxing to her back – so she also goes for physical therapy 3 times a week.  Joe is keeping out of trouble by continuing to work as a toll collector.  Unfortunately, he is still a Cowboys fan.

update on primera’s pastoral house

Volunteers have done a lot of work at Primera Iglesia’s pastoral home over the past few months.  The parsonage passed the electrical inspection.   After that, the work began: drywall, taping and floating, painting, trim work, repainting and oiling the shutters, etc.  The youth team this past week laid all the flooring- laminate and vinyl- and worked on the trim.  The team did a good job, and the ladies of the congregation served them lunch at the church.  It looked like the team had a lot of fun volunteering!  It is amazing that high school youth finished these floors so well.  We are grateful to see all the work that’s been done on the home.  When it is finished, it will put Primera in a much better position to hire a full-time pastor. 

Pastoral house for Primera

Laying the kitchen tile

Kitchen

Installing the laminate floor

Huge stack of donated laminate floor

Huge youth team working

Taking a break in the kitchen

Finished flooring

Finished kitchen floor

More flooring and trim

Flooring and trim

Go team!

the word from pastor tim 6-27-10

Sermon: Psalm 77 Sermon

Text: Psalm 77

To listen, click here:

To download, click here: Psalm 77 Sermon 6-27-10 

In the sermon, Tim illustrates with the following pictures how he thinks we respond in a time of crisis.  We tend to see only our circumstances.  He reminds us to put things in perspective and view our trials in light of what God is doing.  God always has a bigger story that gives us hope even when we are overcome with emotions or difficult situations.  We have faced this in our own lives recently with Tim’s surgery.  We have felt the self-focus and been through the range of emotions, yet we trust and proclaim that God is bigger than our trials.  There is much more to the story than we can see.  We find our hope in the one who loves us.   

Our perspective

Bigger story going on

sunsets in galveston

We’ve seen some pretty beautiful sunsets lately in Galveston.  The clouds have been pretty lately.  We don’t live too far from the Galveston Bay, so if I can walk there quickly, I might catch a good picture.   Sometimes, though, the light changes way too quickly and it’s easy to miss!  Other pictures we have taken out the van window while driving.  It is fun for me to try and stop the van at a perfect place for a picture.  I know Tim doesn’t understand my insanity, but he has happily joined in and taken a bunch of the pictures for me while I’m driving.  🙂  Enjoy.

welcome back Amber!

Amber at Fish Tales

On Tuesday, we welcomed my sister Amber back to Galveston.  It is great to have her here for the next month.  My cousin Cindy picked her up at the airport, and Tim, Amber, and Cindy had a great lunch at the Spot on Tuesday.  It is fun to come home from work every day and see Amber in the house.  I am looking forward to this weekend since I will have more time to just hang out and do some fun stuff.  Amber’s already been a big help to us in running some errands and helping cook dinner.  Yay Amber- glad you’re here!  I pray that God would bless our time together and that he would use you in some awesome ways while you are here.

highlights of the week

Some highlights of another busy week in Galveston:

• Update on the little Bean- Curly Bean is getting bigger as my belly sticks out further and further.  🙂  The baby is still moving a lot.  Here is a picture from Sybil’s shower of a few of the other pregnant girls at work and me.  I think how pregnant you look is highly dependent on the shirt.  Sybil is due at the end of July, me at the beginning of September, and Lauren mid September.  One of our patients calls us the Fraternity of Maternity.  Isn’t that cute?  Lauren and her husband will be going to childcare classes with Tim and I starting this Tuesday.  It’s going to be great to know someone else there!

Lauren, Jenn and Sybil

Baby at 29 1/2 weeks

• Working full-time as a PT is going well so far.  I am certainly more tired every day, but the people I work with are awesome.  They help take a lot of the physical part of my job away as far as transferring patients or walking with them.  I still do some of it, but they have helped me out a bunch. 
• Tim has had a great week of exercising, riding his bike around the island and taking care of a bunch of things.  He installed the grab bar at Harriet’s house for her tub this week.  He ran/biked around organizing lunch at Primera for a youth volunteer team at the parsonage (more pics and details on that to follow in a separate post).  He leaped tall buildings with a single bound… no wait… that’s superman.  He met with Eddie and looked at a church that needed rebuilding.  There is much more to say about the parsonage and church buildings, so they will be in separate posts. 
• My dog is crazy sometimes.  We found a Barkley toy that Dana (I think)  hid when she was here in November.  It was hidden because it was driving all of us (mostly me) nuts.  Barkley would squeak it nonstop.  We gave it back to the dog, and Barkley played with it nonstop for three days until it was mysteriously lost again.  🙂  That toy needs to come out in short bursts only. 
• We went to Market on the Strand on Saturday afternoon.  It was a small unexciting group of vendors mostly selling arts and crafts.  But we enjoyed getting out and walking around.  We stopped at an old fashioned ice cream shop called Lafitte Confectionary and Sweets on the Strand (hope I spelled it right).  It was a fun place but very crowded with tourists for the weekend trying to stay out of the heat.   The ice cream was good, very creamy…mmmm.  Tim said the shake was as good as the ones from Sonic… not a very resounding endorsement since it was much more expensive. 
• Went out to The Spot to celebrate Father’s day- yay Tim.  It is a good burger place on the Seawall.  It was busy, but they were well staffed, so service was pretty quick considering the crowd.  Overall- a good week!

Mmmm milkshake

Old fashioned ice cream shoppe

Barkley's toy that needs rationing for my sanity

have a blessed father’s day!

Father's Day blessing for Bobby and Joe

Today at Primera, we prayed over the fathers who were present and also for those absent.  This is a special Father’s Day for us as Tim is going to be a Daddy too very soon! 

We also wanted to wish everyone a blessed fathers day!  Thanks for being the men God created you to be, for bringing strength into this world, and for being a blessing in the lives of your children.  Grace and peace!

the word from pastor tim 6-20-10

I love the title of Tim’s sermon.  It is so crazy yet intriguing.  Luckily for the women at Primera, there is no bulletin to print such crazy things.  It would be a great sermon to send to a search committee though.  🙂  The title makes me ask, what would I do if I met a naked crazy person?  My initial response is to turn and run the other way, all the while thinking about how crazy that person is.  Then I would probably go home and tell everyone else what I just saw.  But that wasn’t Jesus’ response…  Praise God for his infinite love and perspective that is much bigger than mine.  Tim’s sermon on the passage examines ourselves from the perspective of the naked crazy person (or demon-possessed man) and how Jesus can redeem him and us. 

Sermon: “When Jesus Meets the Naked Crazies”

Text: Luke 8:26-39

To listen, click here:

To download, click here: When Jesus Meets the Naked Crazies 6-20-10