I believe, burning in most of our minds this month, particularly on Friday, September 11, even if it is just a fleeting thought, we, down deep - we wish we could forget – we remember, and think back on those tragic events that hit our nation 8 years ago.

It was unthinkable, the tragedy was horrific – and as a result the images are forever etched upon our minds in one way, or another. It has been said before, that monumental moments in history, will never be forgotten by the generation that experienced it along with subsequent generations.

My guess is that we all intimately know the reality of that truth as our friends and families - our children and grandchildren and even great grandchildren know the effects of that day on what will forever be known as “9-11”

The prophet Isaiah in chapter 9 reminds us of our hope in life, no matter what we face, when he wrote:

“the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light… through oppression and war… a Child is born, a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end…”

May you truly have a blessed month!

Rev. Johnny Rhoad

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Anniversaries	Mike and Shirleen Fugitt 9/10 1994 Dan and Paula Vockrodte 9/14 1991 Ray and Candy Sowers 9/27 1975 Elton and Pat Henderson 10/4 1953
September Birthdays MIKE GAER 9/1 CLEO THELEN 9/5 PATSY HENDERSON 9/7 PAULA VOCKRODT 9/9 ROGER EDWARDS 9/19 RHIANNON SEARS 9/22 WAYNE MABERRY 9/27 BOBBY SOWERS 9/27 KAYCEE HODSON 9/28 KEN DROPPERS 9/29 LARRY NELSON 9/30	October Birthdays MARCIA GRAVES 10/3 JOHN ELLEFSON 10/5 MONTY BECHTOLD 10/13 MARGARET ELLEFSON 10/16 PAUL SOWERS 10/16 HILARY HUNT 10/19 DAYTON CANADAY 10/30 CORI BECHTOLD 10/31 SAYRA MABERRY MORTIMER 10/31

 2009 Central SD Start! Heart Walk

September 26, 2009:  Candy Sowers will walk in the Heart Walk with co-workers at American State Bank.  If you would like to make a donation to the cause please let me know. 

I know that we really work for the Relay for Life but many of us have also lost loved ones to heart disease OR been fortunate enough to have friends or family who have been treated and are living well with heart disease. 

PLEASE don't feel pressured, I just want to share the opportunity.

Thank you,
     Candy Sowers

 To Oahe Presbyterian Women:
 
Thank you so much for your prayer support and monetary support when I attended the Churchwide Gathering (God Will Do Wonders Among You) in Louisville in July. Mission is alive and well as demonstrated by workshops, reports, offerings, Cents-ibility donations at meals, gift cards brought to help children in Kentucky, and quilt squares donated for needy children.

Plenary sessions were inspiring with incredible speakers, skits, and music; the moderator and stated clerk of the General Assembly spoke to us as well.

Tours of Churchill Downs and the Presbyterian Center were informative and important to me because the 2012 Gathering will be in Orlando.  Again, thanks.
 
Yours in Christ,
     Margaret Ellefson

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IKE – On the First Anniversary Afterwards - September 13, 2008
     ---Gene Straatmeyer

Personal remembrances and reflections
We left a day and a half before Ike officially hit the Peninsula.  Our son Mike helped us nail the plywood to the front windows. We had previously put hurricane blinds on the back. Mike’s house already had hurricane blinds so he buttoned up quickly. Earlier in the morning we pulled his “vintage” 1972 Ford pickup to a friend’s house in High Island where it survived the storm without damage. Everything else was left in our ground level garage.  Our golf cart and lawn tractor were the biggest items but it also contained everything one has in a storage shed.

We left Crystal Beach about 2 PM on Thursday afternoon with a stiff wind already blowing off the ocean.  The ferry was shutting down at sunset and since we believed there would already be a long line, we headed northeast to High Island.  There is a bridge at Rollover Pass where the Peninsula is only a quarter mile wide. When we crossed, the ocean waves were already high enough so that the water sprayed on to the highway.

Our son-in-law stayed back to complete a few finishing touches on daughter Sandee’s house and in the process fell off a high ladder and landed on the cement driveway.  Neighbors still there called the ambulance and fortunately a few of the fire department volunteers were still around so he was taken by ambulance to Galveston.  They held the ferry and he went straight across to the University of Texas Medical Center in Galveston. Although he was hurt, it was not serious, and by evening our grandsons had to drive to Galveston to bring him home because the water was rising on Galveston Island and the hospital was being evacuated.

Others residents decided, because it was judged only a Category II Hurricane, to stay on the Peninsula until Friday.  But in the early AM hours of Friday, the water was rising rapidly quickly covering the highway, the only escape route other than boat.  Those who waited until sun-up Friday morning didn’t make it because water was deep over the road going to High Island and the ferry was already closed down. Many lived to tell of their brush with death.  Some were plucked off the tops of trucks, cars and houses by helicopter Friday afternoon. Saturday afternoon, after a fear filled night and morning, some were awaiting rescue on their roofs, while some floated across the Bay to Smyth Point by hanging on to debris while others were drowned when their homes were swept away by the high water.  Pets had to be left behind because the Coast Guard was only rescuing people.  One man who had an adult tiger and lion took them to the Baptist Church where they weathered the storm.

In Sugar Land on Friday morning we were getting a generator ready (in case we lost electricity) and purchasing essentials like drinking water and food.  Ike hit the Houston area late Friday night and Saturday morning with high winds and heavy thunderstorms.  Because of thousands of fallen trees the electricity went out and for the next several weeks we lived with a generator supplying power for the refrigerator, a lamp or two, television and occasionally computers – but not air conditioning. Our grandkids didn’t think they could exist without their modern gadgets but they did. However, they shouted loud hurrahs when the electricity came back several weeks later.

We anxiously watched television and the computer to search for our homes when there were picture-taking flyovers of the Peninsula.  It took a couple of weeks before we learned from television that Gilchrist and Crystal Beach had taken the brunt of Ike, We were told that at one time water covered the whole Peninsula, that the sustained winds had been as high as 120 miles per hour and that the tidal surge had been as high as 18 feet.  Over time we came to realize that both Mike and Sandee’s houses were gone but that ours was still standing although we didn’t know what the damage might be. We assumed the garage and everything in it was gone.

On October 26th we were allowed back to the Peninsula for the first time.  It took that long because the highway was covered with three or more feet of sand, houses had floated to the middle of the road and had to be bulldozed to the side, a part of the bridge over Rollover Pass was out and there were no services like grocery stores, gas stations, post office, water, cafes, and electricity. Only about a dozen people who had refused to evacuate after the storm were on the Peninsula.

We woke up early that morning and drove from Sugar Land to Winnie and then south to High Island.  No one was allowed in until sunrise since looting had become a big problem.  And, no one was allowed on to the Peninsula if they didn’t have proof of residency.  We had an old electric bill with our name and post office box on it. We encountered a mile long line of cars at 6 AM about six miles north of High Island so we waited in the dark until the first rays of light appeared on the eastern horizon. Then we were cleared and drove the 20 miles through High Island to our house in the Sand Castle subdivision.

As we pulled up, the driveway was covered with drifts of sand at least three feet high.  A slimy mud covered the garage floor.  Everything under the garage was gone, the walls, the golf cart, the lawnmower, the tools – there was nothing but vacant space and a lot of debris from houses in front of us that didn’t make it past our downstairs.  Our pillars were scarred from parts of other houses washing under ours.  Seven houses between our house and the beach were gone.  Where we once had only a small view of the Gulf of Mexico, now there was a vast expanse of ocean visible from our deck.

Even our stairs were still there, so we climbed to the front door, tore off the plywood and unlocked the door.  Inside it was just as we left it six weeks before.  There was no damage to speak of except some things fell off a shelf. With winds of 120 miles per hour and gusts that may have been higher, our relatively new home must have shaken, rattled and rolled – but it refused to kneel and humble itself before Ike. Even the shingles held on.

Our first thought was what this meant.  Most neighbors and fellow residents on the Peninsula lost everything.  Most people ask “Why me Lord?” when they face tragedy and there were many on this sand bar that asked that very question. However, we asked, “Why us Lord?” Why were we were spared and others weren’t? I think it is a common response in times of disaster – some are almost unscathed while others are scared, battered and even lose their life. Survivors wonder why they came through the devastation unscathed. What is God trying to communicate?

We also gave thanks to God for sparing our home and prayed for those who arrived at their homes to see nothing but a cement slab or a battered, unlivable house. If everyone had come back to the Peninsula at the same time, I believe the all debris and all the sand would have been wet with tears. This was a staggering loss for so many residents who live here and owned homes here.

Before Ike there were 6500 homes on the Peninsula.  Only 3% were in the kind of shape where residents could move back in immediately.  Another 3500 were totally blown or washed away. Most of the rest were in such bad shape that in the days ahead they would keep carpenters occupied for a long time.

A week or so later we moved back even though we had no electricity, no sewer, and no water. Groceries and mail pickup were 35 miles away, gasoline 14 miles away and the ferry was only hauling work crews and equipment across from Galveston.  

Having grown up in rural SD during the Great Depression and World War II, we knew what it was like not to have all the conveniences so “making the best of the situation” wasn’t as hard as it might seem.  There were many who thought Ike had affected our brains – they couldn’t live without conveniences and believed that those who did needed a psychologist.  Consequently, most residents who had homes that were livable didn’t get back until Christmas. In addition, having lived 21 years in Alaska where we became campers made another big difference. It helped us survive more comfortably. 

During our first month on the Peninsula, it was very dark at night and that made the stars brighter than I had seen them since I was a boy living on a farm in South Dakota without electricity.  Jean and I often sat on the deck and listened to the silence and ogled at the marvelous universe above us. What we saw reminded of the Psalmist (8:3-4) who said, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?  Comparing what was above us and the absolute chaos around us made for many thoughts about God’s providence and God’s relationship to suffering. Ike caused great emotion damage to people here some bodily damage to those who were left behind, and death to others who didn’t make it out.

Martial law had been declared so cars or people couldn’t enter the Peninsula before sunrise and they had to be out by sunset. Even when we drove to Winnie for groceries and mail, we had to make certain we were back before twilight or we would not be let in until the following morning. Even when we were in our home at night, we were not allowed to step away from our house at night. Anyone found outside was arrested because looting was still a problem and police and National Guard were patrolling the area. After all the workers left between 5-6 PM, silence fell descended on the landscape and stayed until sunrise.  About all we heard was the occasional distant splash of a wave hitting the beach, an occasional, distant gunshot and the National Guard ATVs which they used to get around.  Roads were not passable.

But, life moves forward and we had to get ourselves back to normal. Thank God for our son Mike. He had a John Deere tractor with a front end loader and he removed the sand from the driveway and the rest of the lot. He prepared the electricity for hook up.  We have a complicated individual home sewer system and it took a specialist and $3,500 to get it working again after the storm surge which washed off the cover and filled it with sand. Our water company worked hard and running water came back sooner than expected.  Mike rebuilt our garage. Our electric company brought in people from all over the country since they had to build 35 miles of new power lines. By Thanksgiving, we were living better but still had no sewer. The family who gathered at our house had to go outdoors to a port-a-potty. The grandkids had a hard time with that. By Christmas we no longer had to haul water and gas from High Island, although we still had to get groceries and mail from Winnie.  Electricity, water and television were back just before New Years. Thank God for cell phones. We were never out of communication with family and friends. Snail mail was the last of the conveniences that returned.

About a month after the new construction was finished below the house, we had our house totally repainted. Any day now we will have our deck resealed and then one last task remains - to re-sod the lawn.  Then we will be back to where we were a year ago.

Son Mike bought a fifth wheel trailer and pulled it on his lot.  As a carpenter, he has had plenty of work restoring Ike damaged homes and rebuilding new ones.  He is getting plans for his house ready so he can rebuild.  Daughter Sandee hasn’t decided whether to rebuild or not. Without the grandchildren being here almost every weekend before Ike, our life has changed since Ike. We spend a lot less time on the beach and there are fewer family gatherings.

As we look back on the year, we see that it was an emotional rollercoaster. We left our home with local historical information that ocean water had never, in the recollection of those who lived here for many years, gotten over the sand dunes on the beach.  We also heard television and radio reports that it was going to veer away from us.  What we expected was only high winds, and that isn’t what happened.  Besides the wind there was a towering wall of water that destroyed almost everything in its path.

Once we were back living on the Peninsula, we found community needs staring directly in our face.  And our response was, “Help is on the way!”  After all, Ike didn’t destroy our Christian faith and a large part of our faith is servanthood.  There were so few of us living here at the outset and someone had to put their hands to the plow.

I was Vice President of the Bolivar Peninsula Community Outreach (BPCO) before Ike.  The president lost his home, decided not to rebuild and moved away.  That automatically put me into a leadership position.
The first task was bringing potable water and food for the residents and workers.  Before we finished this project, in cooperation with VOAD, 44 semi-loads of water were delivered and 14 semis of Meals Ready to Eat (MRE)/

Hearing of $2 million in private gifts given to restore homes in Galveston County, I immediately set up an ad hoc committee of BPCO to get Bolivar Peninsula included.  There were many stipulations to getting the money and the very first was having a caseworker.  Jean, with her social work background, volunteered, and for the next two months we were off to get trained, she for the casework and for me, managing the rebuilding of homes that were funded by the group. The caseworker job was far greater than we imagined, and by the end of August we were about burned out.  Jean’s responsibility was greater than mine; she had people calling her at all hours and with our home being the office, clients occupied our kitchen table often past the dinner hour.  

My responsibility was to recruit volunteers to help rebuild and once they were here to keep them occupied with meaningful work.  On September first, Jean was relieved of her responsibility when Catholic Charities hired two caseworkers and placed them in an office in Crystal Beach. However, there is a third desk in their office – one for Jean who has become an old pro at enabling the restoration and rebuilding of homes.

Right in the middle of everything we had our biggest emotional blow. Our great, African dog, Malawi died in February.  Before Ike he had the deck, the cool downstairs beside the garage and a small part of the grassy back yard.  Ike ruined that space.  One day Malawi escaped the temporary gate on the deck and wondered to the highway where a fast-moving debris truck hit and killed him instantly.  Many tears were shed.  We still miss him.  He is one of the best dogs we have ever had.  A friend had a tombstone made for him that says, “Malawi, if tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I’d walk right up to doggie heaven and bring you home again.”  In the midst of all of this Jean finished her third book about this special dog, “An African Dog in Texas.”  On the first two books, Malawi helped send $8000 to the orphans of Malawi. Soon, he will be send thousands of dollars more to them when his final book is sold.

My responsibility with hurricane recovery has not gone away, but Jean is picking up part of my load.
Part of the stress we felt and still feel is so much need and so little we can do.  And the people were stressed as well.  Some were arguing with insurance companies.  Others were trying to prove ownership of their house or land when everything was washed away.  Having a safety deposit box in the local bank didn’t help because the whole bank was deposited (no pun intended) into Galveston Bay.

On my end, the frustration was that this hurricane generated so little help.  Money didn’t come in as it did with Katrina to assist the survivors. Volunteer numbers were way down.  It didn’t take very long before we quit advertizing the money available from GCR2 because we had more people coming to Jean just by word of mouth than she could handle. If Jean completed their casework and they were eligible for volunteers, there were not enough volunteers to help out.  Volunteers stretch the available money and allow many more to get their homes back to livability.

So, as we enter the second year after Ike, we are still involved.  We aren’t quite sure what the second year after Ike will bring.

I’d like to close this section of my report on the first anniversary of Ike with a website video “Help Is on the Way.”  I just found it – and I don’t know who produced it or who the soloist is.  But most of the Ike pictures are from Galveston and Bolivar Peninsula.  We are still in need of prayer – and donated labor

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Never Underestimate our God
---Contributed by Cindy Droppers

Dwight Nelson recently told a true story about the pastor of his church. He had a kitten that climbed up a tree in his backyard and then was afraid to come down. The pastor coaxed, offered warm milk, etc. The kitty would not come down.  The tree was not  sturdy enough to climb, so the pastor decided that if he tied a rope to his car and pulled it until the tree bent down, he could then reach up and get the kitten.

That's what he did, all the while checking his progress in the car mirror. He then figured if he went just a little bit further, the tree would be bent sufficiently for him to reach the kitten. But as he moved the car a little further forward, the rope broke. The tree went 'boing!' and the kitten instantly sailed through the air & out of sight.  The pastor felt terrible. He walked all over the neighborhood asking people if they'd seen a little kitten. No, nobody had seen a stray kitten.

So he prayed, 'Lord, I just commit this kitten to your keeping,' and went on about his business. A few days later he was at the grocery store, and met one of his church members. He happened to look into her shopping cart and was amazed to see cat food.  This woman was a cat hater and everyone knew it, so he asked her, 'Why are you buying cat food when you hate cats so much?'

She replied, 'You won't believe this,' and then told him how her little girl had been begging her for a cat, but she kept refusing.  Then a few days before, the child had begged again, so the Mom finally told her little girl, 'Well, if God gives you a cat, I'll let you keep it.'   She told the pastor, 'I watched my child go out in the yard, get on her knees, and ask God for a cat. And really, Pastor, you won't believe this, but I saw it with my own eyes. A kitten suddenly came flying out of the blue sky, with its paws outspread, and landed right in front of her.'

Lesson learned: Never underestimate the Power of God and His unique sense of humor.

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Painting Project Finished      ---Cindy Droppers  As you walk into the narthex at the church and take a look around you will notice a difference. First if you look up at the ceiling you will notice that the cracks that have been steadily getting worse over the last couple of years have disappeared. That is because we had Jim Ackerman come and fix them for us. Then if you look around at the walls you will see that they look a little crisper and fresher and also they seem to have changed color a little. That is because with the help of some very industrious people the narthex, hallway and meeting room have received a very much needed paint job. We anticipated it to take about 3 nights to finish but since it ended up needing two coats and a lot of people were unable to help as much as needed it ended up being done over a two-week period of time. The first night was prep night. Everything was moved, taken down or removed and all of the taping was done. The second and third nights the first coat of paint was put on. After that things were done by a few when they could get back to it. Ken spent until 1:00 A.M. one night working on the second coat in the narthex. Then went back and finished early the next morning before having to leave town. Mary and Duane Jenner spent the second week putting on the second coat in the hallway and meeting room. And also spent a lot of time that week replacing lots of switch plates, air vents, corner guards, etc., hanging things back on the walls and putting all of the furniture back in place. Those who signed up to help with this project and deserve a big thank you from all of us were…. Tena Gaer, Denny Pfrimmer, Sandy Nelson, Cleo Thelen, Mary and Duane Jenner, Candy Sowers, Helen Wishard, Chris Nelson, KayCee Hodson, Pastor John and the boys, Lee Baron and Ron Woodburn and Ken and Cindy Droppers. If anyone wasn’t on the list but helped in any way at all we thank you as well. The giving of your time and energy is greatly appreciated.

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Mission Committee Purchases Tee Shirts

The mission outreach committee has designed and purchased tee shirts for the members and friends of Oahe Presbyterian Church.   The shirts come in all sizes and colors but all have the three cross logo and mission statement on the front and a picture of the church and name on the back.

The hope is that as each individual or group from OPC who, when volunteering around the community, state and nation will wear the teeshirts as a statement of our faith and joy at Oahe Presbyterian Church.

The group walked from the steps of the Capitol Building to the American Legion building at the end of main street and walked back again.