All is safe and well in Hattiesburg

Just wanted to let everyone know that we're doing fine. We, along with most everyone in town, stayed inside almost all day yesterday, and the roads were near empty. We had some heavy rain and bouts of whistling wind pretty much all day/all evening (and it still continues) and the sky looks pretty ominous, but not even close to what they were showing on TV. They say we only got 3-5 inches in our area. We had tornado warnings throughout a good part of the day, and that was kind of unsettling to hear the sirens going off in the distance and coming from the TV periodically. There were some power outages, but our lights never went out.

Everyone in town pretty much breathed a collective sigh of relief. Gustav, at least for our area, was NOT a repeat of Katrina. I guess the worst that happened to us is that we were bored being cooped up all day long. The scene was reminiscent of the children's book, "The Cat in the Hat" --a boy and a girl staring gloomily out the window with the narrator reading in the background--“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.”

As I mentioned before, there are lots of refugees from down south staying in town, and the governor has told everyone to stay put until Wednesday. I'm sure there will be some damage and flooding for some when they return home. School remains closed today, which is probably a good thing, since a lot of local students with family near the coast traveled with their families to evacuate to other states etc.

The general feeling down here is that the media only thinks that Katrina affected New Orleans, when in fact many other places took a direct hit. I noticed yesterday as we watched the news that that was still the case (though understandable). It's been a bit difficult to sort out what's actually true coming from the media or if things are being exaggerated in order to get a news story. This morning I read on the local newspaper's website that there were "gaping holes where fists of air punched through" many billboards in town, when in fact, that was done beforehand as a preventative measure to keep the signs from catching the wind and toppling over.

Well, there go the tornado warning bells again...

Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts.