Category: Four Horsemen (Page 7 of 7)

I’ve seen many more pictures of the flooding in and around Marble Falls and talked to many more of our dear friends down there since yesterday’s post. Thank God they didn’t receive hardly any additional rain last night. But the devastation from Tuesday night’s flood appears today to be worse than anybody originally thought. At least 150 homes and businesses have been damaged. They are able to produce a little bit of water for residents, but they first have to boil every drop they use. Because of that, most every business and restaurant in Marble Falls is still closed today. Mayor Raymond Whitman, a member of the church in Marble Falls, is estimating millions of dollars in damages to the city’s infrastructure, mainly in washed out bridges and roads. Here’s a short story from the Statesman on Marble Falls’ situation. They’re expecting up to six more inches of rain today and tonight. Here’s an interesting series of charts and tables from the LCRA on all five of the Highland Lakes. Scroll down and check out the spikes on the lake levels at Lake Marble Falls and Lake Travis. They’re still in a “major flood event” this morning on Travis. Here are some pictures and commentary from my good friend Jimmy Mitchell, the youth minister in Marble Falls. And here’s a whole bunch of great pictures from KXAN-TV in Austin. And, I can’t help it. Here are the ones that have impacted me the most. I’m not very good (any good at all, actually) at positioning these pictures where I’d like. Help me, John!!! Pardon the weird style of all this.

This is  the creek behind the Methodist church and Margarita’s, between 1431 and Mission Hills Drive, where we lived for the past two years. This is a portion of Avenue J near downtown that’s been washed out. This is Commerce Street where Dan Burdett lost four or five of his storage units. A couple of boat shops and BFI’s Burnet County headquarters are there and received lots of damage from the flooding of Whitman Branch.  Here’s a picture of one of many cars that were washed out on Highway-1431 just east of town.    Johnson Park is still under water.  This is the view from the skate park looking towards Johnson Park and Backbone Creek. Here’s another of Johnson Park.  This is Lakeside Park where all the picnic pavilions were under water.  And this is the section of Broadway, right there by the Boys & Girls club, leading up to the old Marble Falls Elementary.   Here’s some more of the damage that was done to the businesses along 281 next to Whitman Branch. Cars and boats and debris thrown around and into other cars and boats and windows and buildings.  Next to the shots of Johnson Park, this is the picture that overwhelms me most. This is the arm of the Llano River that shoots out onto the Kingsland Slab. That bridge that’s covered there is only for cars. If you want to get out into all that, you generally just step across on the rocks. I’ve never seen that more than knee deep. Never. That’s where you take the little kids to play in the water and picnic. I can’t believe how deep and wide it is today!  Finally, arial shots of Wirtz Dam between Lakes LBJ and Marble Falls  and of Starcke Dam between Lakes Marble Falls and Travis.  To all our dear friends in the Hill Country and along the beautiful Highland Lakes, we love y’all and we’re thinking of y’all and praying for y’all.

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63 more days until football season. And the all-time #63 is Gene Upshaw. Out of Texas A&I Kingsville (Javelinas?), he was the Oakland Rai-duhs #1 pick in 1967 and played on the offensive line with Art Shell and John Madden for most of his 15 NFL seasons. Upshaw played in ten AFL/AFC title games and three Super Bowls. He played in 307 career games and became the first ever exclusive offensive guard to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He’s making big-time news now as the long-time head of the NFL Players Association and catching all kinds of heat for taking care of current players but ignoring and neglecting all the old-timers who can’t get out of bed in the mornings because of their chronic injuries and illnesses directly related to their football careers.

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“Therefore, this is what the Lord says, ‘I will return to Jerusalem with mercy, and there my house will be rebuilt. And the measuring line will be stretched out over Jerusalem,’ declares the Lord Almighty. Proclaim further: This is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘My towns will again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and choose Jerusalem.'”     ~Zechariah 1:16-17

 Peace,

Allan

19-1/2 inches of rain in less than ten hours on top of already saturated ground and swollen rivers and creeks produced some major flooding overnight and early this morning in our home away from home, Marble Falls. Our old house on Hackberry, in the Pecan Valley Subdivision two streets off the lake where we called home for almost seven years, is under water. Johnson Park, where I’ve MCed beauty pageants and battles of bands, pushed my girls on the merry ground, prayed with youth groups, swung on the monkey bars, and eaten HowdyFest chili is underwater. Lakeside Park is flooded. A house across the street from Kyle & Marti Futrell was struck by lightning and burned to the ground because 1) fire crews were too busy rescuing people from their flooded-out homes and 2) they couldn’t get up there to fight it anyway. Highways 281, 29, and 1431 into and out of Marble Falls were flooded. Meadowlakes residents are trapped. There are 30 families trying to dry out at the Marble Falls Middle School, about two blocks up from the Futrell rent house we called home for the past two years. Great friends Jerry & Cindy Jamar had their house flooded. Clint & Tiffany Young are flooded. Dan Burdett, one of my closest friends, lost four of his commercial buildings on Commerce Street. There have been over 40 water rescues made since 4:00 this morning. There’s no water coming out of the city pipes. None. No drinking water. No bathing water. Everything’s shut down. A state of disaster has been declared. The National Guard has moved in. The Red Cross has set up shop at Cattleman’s Bank next to the HEB where they’re passing out bottled water. Apache helicopters and rescue units have arrived from Fort Hood in Killeen and have set up at Home Depot. All the floodgates on all five dams on the Highland Lakes are open, and the water levels are still rising. Lake Travis, not a small lake between Marble Falls and Austin, has risen over five feet since last night. The boundaries of the 100 year flood plain have been breached. Big time.

And they’re anticipating 8-9 additional inches of rain tonight.

Praise God there have been no injuries or deaths reported. Everyone was warned ahead of time. The LCRA did its job in getting the weather reports and communicating their forecasts for what the lakes and rivers would do. I know from long discussions with Guy Nelson and Don Graves how stressful that is. The system worked. But if they get more rain tonight, tomorrow will look worse than today.

Please pray today for all our great friends in Marble Falls. The people and the church there are a permanent part of our lives. Our hearts are with them today. And I wish you’d lift them up to God right now. May our Lord bless them and deliver them from the waters. May he grant them peace and comfort in the midst of the turmoil and uncertainties. And may he use that church, that body of believers who meet in Marble Falls, to reach out to the hurting community with the compassion and love of Christ. May our God use this awful circumstance to impact the area with his grace. And may the church there have the vision and the passion to see the opportunities for Christian service that are literally washing up all around them.

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I delivered the Discipleship lessons I used at the Legacy Youth Retreat a couple of months ago to the teenaged children of the deaf people who are here for the annual National Deaf Christian Workshop. They were very responsive and enthusiastic about the pictures we have in our Scriptures regarding our God and his Son and what it means to truly follow him. Thanks to Collin Swofford for helping out and to Jason Brown for setting up my projector.

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64 days until football season. And #64 on my all-time jersey list is Packers offensive lineman Jerry Kramer. Some would list Kramer ahead of John Hannah and Rayfield Wright as the best pulling-guard to ever lead a sweep. I’m thinking you and I could pull pretty well if we were leading for Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung. But Kramer certainly belongs in the top five. He played for the Packers for 11 years, won five NFL titles, including the first two Super Bowls. But what he’s most remembered for is the clinching block he put on Jethro Pugh in the Ice Bowl NFL Championship game of 1966 in Green Bay to spring Bart Starr for the game-winning TD.

13-seconds left. Cowboys up 21-17. 3rd down and no timeouts. And they quarterback sneak it over Kramer for the winning score. A surprise call. A great block. And it made Kramer famous. End zone TV cameras captured the block so well, and they showed it over and over again for weeks. Kramer became the very first ever offensive lineman recognized nationally for his blocking. And it was all because of TV and instant replay. In fact, the name of Kramer’s excellent autobiography is Instant Replay.

I hate it. Had the Cowboys won the Ice Bowl, the Super Bowl trophy would be named after Landry instead of Lombardi.

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“During the night I had a vision—and there before me was a man riding a red horse! He was standing among the myrtle trees in a ravine. Behind him were red, brown, and white horses. I asked, ‘What are these, my lord?’ Then the man standing among the myrtle trees explained, ‘They are the ones the Lord has sent to go throughout the earth.'”

                                      ~Zechariah 1:8-10

Peace,

 Allan