Early spring in Texas

New green leaves on trees and blooms on the ornamental fruit trees and red buds surely look good to winter-weary eyes.    In February, El Paso suffered from the cold snap that much of the rest of the country endured and temperatures dropped to single digits.  Consequently, every palm tree in the city is dead.    A massive trimming action is underway in hopes that many of the trees will come back.  Cactus and dessert plantings took a beating as well.   A beautiful city looks kind of be-draggled.

Bill boards at strategic intervals here say:   Pray for Juarez during Lent            The situation there is lawless.         El Paso remains safe, however.     We will pray.      

Texas. . .Part II

We are in a different country. . .Part II:    In contrast to the impressions described in my last post, El Paso can be an example of a global workshop for peace at times.      Tonight we went to a Gospel  Concert at Montwood High School put on by the school choir and accompanied by the St. Mark United Methodist Church Praise Band in which  our son-in-law, Robert,  plays guitar.    Montwood H.S. is on the east side of the city; concentrations of black and Korean communities are in this area.     Americans of many ethnic backgrounds gathered together to sing, dance, and play contemporary gospel music in a concert to raise money for a Hispanic student with cancer.

"Music is healing,"  said Joe Estala, director of the St. Mark Praise Band and choir director at the high school.    The school commons rocked with loud music, singing and clapping; the crowd stood,  swayed to the rhythm and sang along.     And the Spirit fell. . .

Texas!

In Texas visiting grandchildren who are on spring break:

We are in a different country! Editorials in the El Paso Times speak of an incompetent Obama who should authorize military force in Libya. . .warn of the hidden welfare state in the U.S. - work retirement plans and employer funded health insurance, and suggest that democracy is impossible in the Middle East. A news article reports that certain companies here sometimes knowingly hire illegal immigrants and just before payday, they turn them in to the government.

A different slant on life than what we are accustomed.