Grrr…. Electricity blinked and I lost my blog before I could save it. Oh well…. let’s try this again…

It’s now 4:20am. I have yet to have had any sleep. We’ve had quite a winter storm here tonight. It started at church this evening. We had gone to the youth meeting at the Baptist church. Andis led worship and Chris, Peteris & Marta backed him. It was cool. Then the wind started to blow and the electricity started to flicker. Poor Peteris, playing electric guitar, said he had to turn his processor back on 9 times cause the power knocked it out. Then once, it stayed out. It was awesome. Pitch dark… then you just see all these cell phones light up. But worship continued, and more heart felt it seemed as everyone really was in their own world and no one could see them. You could here Andis & Chris’ voices above the crowd leading with just Chris’ acoustic guitar as we all sang:

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

How precious, how precious

You are, my Jesus

How precious, how precious

Is your closeness

Too bad the lights came back on.

Andis and I were joking afterwards that maybe the power would go out and stay out and we wouldn’t have school in the morning. The wind was starting to blow really hard. When we got home we walked into a very dark apartment, as our power was already out. It stayed off, as did the hot water and the heat, for about another hour or 2. Not too bad. Once we were re-ushered into the 21st century. I learned that the Latvian news was warning that there could be “hurricane force winds” tonight. Oh yea.

It continued to rain, and then, I think from the wind chill more than anything, that turned to snow, though it was blowing so hard and fast, it wasn’t landing anywhere. In the street lights, which are at eye-level from our 3rd floor apartment, we could just see the snow blowing straight; no angle, just straight across.

Our apartment faces west, and our living room balcony was getting the brunt of the direct winds. We also have this annoying piece of loose metal on our roof that, no matter how many times we have reported it, and they come fix things up there, they always miss this piece. So, it’s been banging all night.

Officially, Riga has had 40mph winds. I have to believe it’s been faster out here in the open fields of the countryside. Though our windows are all shut, I was lying in bed getting a nice, cool, fresh, breeze now and then from the amazing draft. I have also been feeling our 3-story concrete block building shaking. Slightly distrurbing.
I finally got up at 3:45 as sleep was not coming. It’s cool how things work out. Shortly after I started up my computer to write this blog, my friend Mark in Kentucky started a chat with me. It was cool to hear some of the stuff he’s learning from God and be able to encourage him some. It was only 9:15pm there. :-)

So school starts in 3 1/2 hours. The power is still on so we’ll probably have school. Thankfully my class isn’t until 12:40pm. I really need some sleep but I wonder if I’m really going to get any at all.

In other news, I really need to write our monthly update letter. And the band is going well. They have some of their music online, albeit all in Latvian, but it’s still cool to listen to. You can check them out at www.myspace.com/fusionlv. Chris is playing drums.

Going to try to get some sleep.

PS As I posted this, I looked at the little weather thing to the right, and it reported gusts at 47mph. Getting higher… and sleep is getting farther away.