News From Mississippi

I started keeping track of Don Elbourne's blog, Locusts and Wild Honey, a few months ago. You may have seen it since he's in my blogroll. One thing I didn't know until Hurricane Katrina hit was that he lives in Lakeshore, Mississippi -- that's about 50 miles from New Orleans. Lakeshore Baptist Church, where Don is the pastor, was pretty much wiped out as you can see below.

Apart from Don, I know virtually no one from the areas that were hit (although I guess I only know Don virtually). It's amazing how we're able, via his blog, to converse with Don and feel a connection to a pastor and church we may never meet. Don posted some comments today along these lines saying how amazed he is at how many people have come to help him and his church. Not simply because people are helping, but because many people who have ventured to Lakeshore or donated money only knew him from his blog.

The internet has been around for a good while now, but it wasn't until blogging and feed aggregators came along that it became possible for us to keep up-to-date on a whole multitude of websites. The ease with which a non-technical person can now publish a website has made it possible for many intelligent, godly people to push wisdom into cyberspace. Now, there's no shortage of fools, but that's to be expected.

Anyway, back to Don. You can see more photos on the Lakeshore Baptist Church website and donate by Paypal or snailmail if God's leading you to do so. I'm going to see what our church men can do to help out churches and families in the region. Just giving money seems inadequate to me -- I've already done that and God's still tugging at me to do more. The NAMB has an Adopt A Church initiative started. Looks interesting. We'll see where God leads us.