Welcome to Texas

Last night I said, "Welcome to Texas" hundreds of times. I was talking to the dazed, shoeless, weary refugees arriving from New Orleans, Louisiana. These spent souls were coming off of five days of horror - danger from nature and fellow man, starvation, thirst, despair, and privation of all sorts.

They arrived by plane and bus all night long at the Austin Convention Center, where we were waiting with smiles, hugs, food, sleeping bags, cots, clean undies, and toothbrushes, among other things. So we spent our evening welcoming them and trying to help them be as comfortable as possible, under the circumstances.

One young man told of seeing two sets of twins born at the Superdome in New Orleans.

One wizened elderly lady of 81 proudly announced to me that she'd had her first helicopter ride and her first plane ride, and that she'd, "walked right up the steps to it herself!"

Another white-haired grandfatherly type praised the Lord with tears in his eyes when he learned, while talking to his son on my cell phone, that his wife and daughter had been safely evacuated from a New Orleans hospital after they were separated.

I am grateful today. So grateful.