Hello everyone,
It's been crazy down here in Texas. Let me give
you a few updates:
Katrina Update:
Amy and
Michael Main now have a family living in
their home. You can read more about it on their blogs. They are running point
with our church backing them up. I think I may be driving the older son back
down to the Kelley Air Force Base shelter tomorrow. He's going to move in with a
cousin in Houston, and they have a free bus running from our main shelter to
Houston.
Another woman in our church has "adopted" a
displaced family. She's also the contact person with us helping. These folks
aren't as desperate. They have a hotel room, which is nice, but they certainly
have a lot of other needs.
Your donations are now well over $2000. I've
given Steve Davis $300. His shelter is filled with people who have medical
needs. I'm going to give him another $300 for various prescription medicines.
I gave $300 to each of the families we are
helping. Amy took them to Walmart to buy clothing and various other items they
are needing. I've had Amy's cooking, so I KNOW they aren't hungry anymore!
Thank you so much for your help. Really, having
access to money makes this kind of help so much easier. Instead of scrambling
around trying to figure out how to pay for stuff, we can concentrate more on
managing the process of helping these people rebuild.
We are frugal with your gifts and are using
them well. I'll keep you posted.
Christmas Audio Book Update:
I picked up the master copy of "A Christmas Story You've Never Heard" yesterday.
Should have the cover art by Friday. I signed a download contract with
IODA
to distribute this audio book through various download outlets. That means you
will be able to download a copy at Itunes or Amazon.com or other places. Not
sure where yet. Or you will be able to buy a CD with a cover and other
information at this website.
I think it turned out well. The only weakness
is my reading. Being as objective as I can, I would say that I'm not bad, but
I'm clearly not a professional. I hope to do better next time. Hopefully the
personal nature of having the author read his own work will be worth the
tradeoff.
The CD has 12 tracks. An introduction and the 8
chapters of the story. Track 10 is me talking about the origins of the story.
This track is very conversational - one take and no script. I talked
Ben into including a couple of tracks of
his wonderful guitar music. The music he did for the chapter about Elias the
retired shepherd/angel is charming. You'll be able to hear it by itself if you
want.
Sometime in the next week or so I'll make a
sample mp3 that you can download. This has been a lot of fun, and we're almost
done. Should easily be ready well before Christmas.
Christian Century Essay Coming:
It's been hard to write for some reason. Probably because of all the focus
on Katrina and the Christmas story. I sent an essay to Christian Century a week
ago. The editor I work with sent it back with a very gentle reply. Kind of a
"Nice idea. Why don't you send it to me when you've finished it." sort of reply.
But in the most gentle terms.
She was absolutely correct, as usual. It was a
nice idea, but I was all over the place. With a second look at it, I can't
believe I even sent it in. It's strange how sometimes you can't hear your own
writing. You just can't hear it for some reason. And then someone says something
and suddenly it's clear.
So yesterday I shut myself in an upstairs room
at the church and swore I would not leave until it was done. Six hours it took
me. (Okay, I did leave for lunch but came right back.) SIX HOURS! And that was
just to fix something that I thought was done.
This thing called writing can be incredibly
hard at times. Sometimes it just flows out of you and sometimes it feels like
hammering a railroad spike into a wall with your forehead.
We'll see what CC says. One way or another, it
will be online soon.
peace,
rlp
