Thankful

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.
"Pooh!" he whispered.
"Yes, Piglet?"
"Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

Quyanaqvaa, thank you so much for all your prayers everybody. God is answering. Gram is still in the hospital, the whole fam is with her, she is having good days and bad days. Docs aren't sure yet what the situation will be. Please continue to lift her to God. I'm up here hanging in there, the fam is keeping me updated several times a day. We appreciate all the kind words, encouragement, and prayers from everyone. Thank you all.

In Quinhagak we have warm summer breezes, yup, breezes gusting up to 80 miles an hour right now. Residual effects from a monsoon in Hawaii and the Aleutians. Strange thing is, this whipping wind is 40 degrees! It is arriving here from the south, warm and balmy. It’s melting all our snow and raining on us! Howling wind is an understatement, its more like a screaming hurricane. It nearly blew me off the road walking to work yesterday. I had to lean the weight of my whole body into the heavy gusts just to stay upright and maintain a straight line homeward, could have windsurfed with a sail. Had to laugh at the thought of the wind suddenly ceasing to blow, I would have immediately fallen over like a bike with the kickstand snapped away. But the battle against the tropical headwinds wasn't entirely a "blow out". The road had transformed into an ideal skating rink and my pak boots lacking snow cleats were not ideal skates, I did one of those futile cartoon river dance numbers just before both feet flew right out from under me, suddenly I was staring up an oddly star filled night sky. After flailing around on my backpack like a turtle whose been flipped on its shell I finally righted myself, but it was a struggle to keep my feet underneath me. So I slipped, slid and was blown back to my own front door. Not sure why but I tried to take Ani for a walk.....Now that was entertaining. Ani, clawing away at the sheet of ice under his paws, wasn't even a match for the elements. He was as much of duck out of water as I had been. We threw in the towel on the whole 'walk' idea and hunkered down at home. The whole house has been trembling for the last 24 hours and I question the Jenga blocks that are posing as a foundation underneath us, though so far so good. There really have been storms like this before which have actually blown houses off of their stilts.

"God, listen to me shout, bend an ear to my prayer. When I'm far from anywhere, down to my last gasp, I call out, "Guide me up High Rock Mountain!" Psalm 61:1-2