Friday Morning Update...

• Volunteering
  
  There continues to be a possibility of additional evacuees coming into San Antonio area shelters over the next few days - some reports of up to 12,000.
  
  [Read the article here.]
  
  If you have registered as a Red Cross Volunteer, we are asking you to please continue to volunteer. The residents in the shelters need you. Alamo City efforts remain focused on the Windsor Park Mall Shelter.
  
  If you are registered with the Red Cross as a Hurricane Relief Chaplain (and have completed the required Chaplain's Training Course), please continue to visit the San Antonio area shelters. We believe that each shelter has an on-site "Chaplain's Office" that can advise you as to specific needs.
  
  As we've said before, this will be a long process. Please continue to pray and participate. What a blessing it is to see so many Alamo City faces involved in this relief effort!


• Out of the Shelters and into New Homes
  
  Below is some information which came out of a very strategic meeting between several San Antonio area pastors and a representative from the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA), Lori Mendez.
  
  Two specific areas of need are listed which may be of particular interest to the Alamo City church family.
  
  First, volunteers are needed to transport San Antonio’s newest friends to and from available housing locations. (Some restrictions will apply.)
  
  Second, Alamo City families and other caring groups are needed to “adopt” our newest families. They will need help with furniture, kitchen supplies, clothes, and all things necessary to function in our community.
  
  It is anticipated that our love for Jesus Christ will come through in our expressions of love for them, and that we will welcome them into the fellowship of our churches.
  
  In order for Alamo City folks to assist in the transportation and adoption process, a list of Alamo City volunteers is being collected at the church under the leadership of Ruben and Sandra Fechner and BridgeBuilders, San Antonio.
  
  Ruben and/or Saundra may be reached by email rff@satx.rr.com or by phone at (210)822-5538, (210) 602-8305 (cell) or (210) 650-5335.
  
  Alamo City volunteers may also sign up by calling the Alamo City church office (210) 654-7880.


• Devotional Thoughts on Katrina, Rita and Terrorism
  
  These are days of unprecedented calamity in our nation. The following is presented with the hope that Alamo City folks will be encouraged to "press on" in hope and faith as we serve Him today:
  
  "Famines, pestilence, persecution—these happen so that the world might see in the followers of Jesus and discover for themselves that God made us for himself and that he is our “exceeding joy” (Psalm 43:4) and at his right hand are pleasures for every more (Psalm 16:11). The losses of life are meant to wean us off the poisonous pleasures of the world and lure us to Christ our everlasting joy."
  
  "God’s deepest answer to terrorism and calamity is the suffering and death of his Son. He entered into our fallen world of sin and misery and death. He bore in himself the cause of it all—sin. And he bought by his death the cure for it all—forgiveness and everlasting joy in the age to come."
  
  Quoted from John Piper, September 11, 2005
  
  [Read the entire article here.]