Disaster

Wednesday night, this computer was attacked by a vicious malware.  The entire screen began blinking and then disappeared.  I tried to do something to stop the action but couldn’t.  I shut it down and went to bed.  We went to the hospital for a luncheon and called the hospital IT guy.  He came and worked on the computer for over an hour before we left.  He took the computer home to work and was to bring it back next day while we were working.  It took longer than he thought it would, so it wasn’t fixed then either.  The good news was that he was certain he could save all the files and pictures.  Saturday we picked up the computer and praised God that most of the things were still on the computer.  It was had getting along without it, but I did have Evelyn’s to work with.  But then it developed a problem: each key had to be held down to make an imprint.  Of course that would not do, so I gave it to a guy in our park to work on.  He took longer than the hospital guy but did fix it.  There was a simple problem that was easy to fix, but he took a couple of days to find it.  He charged me $25.  The IT guy only charged $40 and did a much more I just thank God that all things were saved.

The other events included playing a good ground of golf with Armand, worked on Sunday’s message, went to support local music students at Ranchero Village, performed with the kitchen band (Evelyn was having her hair cut short) watched Purdue lose big to Michigan State (they had slept only about 4 hours the day before), went to downtown Weslaco for the monthly street party and heard a jazz band, went to the Tower theater to see “Star Spangled Girl”, went for a pizza buffet and went to a concert organized and partly performed by Vance Greek.  Today we had a good attendance at our worship service and came home so Evelyn could try to sleep.  She has not slept well the past 2 nights.  I just worked around the house until lunch of delicious gumbo she had made earlier in the week.  I had planned to go to McAllen to buy a new television set, but we couldn’t get our act together.  We invited Rose and Armand to play Phase 10 until 8 when they were expecting a call from Canada.

During the afternoon I was blessed to do some chaplain type work in listening to a friend.  He had attempted suicide by breathing into a plastic bag.  He had been depressed because of a problem with his daughter’s family.  He has suffered from depression for several years and had planned suicide several times.  This time it was a spur of the moment event.  He told me of the ordeal and the treatment he had received that had helped him overcome his depression.  He seemed pretty good when we prayed together and I left.  It is a real blessing to counsel and pray with someone who is hurting.  I always thank God for these opportunities.  Tomorrow marks about 2 weeks before we fly out to Israel.