First snow and canceled plans

It snowed. Friday night, all day today (Saturday). It's supposed to keep it up tomorrow too. Wet, heavy, gross snow. More like slush once it's on the ground. And ridiculously slippery.

My supervisor, Judy, and I were planning to take five high school students to Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, for the Church Youth Fest this weekend. We gathered at Grace in Nerstrand this morning. I almost slid into the ditch on the way there, going only 30 mph. It took Judy more than twice as long as usual to make her commute. It was ugly.

Here's my driveway earlier this evening, after quite a bit of melting. Still snowing, as you can see.








So Judy finally arrived about a half-hour after our appointed gathering time, and we probably spent another 20 minutes trying to decide whether or not to go. Painful deliberations! The roads were awful, but we knew they'd probably get better south of Rochester, but it's an hour to Rochester in good weather. We would have missed the first few hours of the retreat.

The kids were so excited that we really hated to let them down, but we finally decided it just wasn't worth taking the chance with other people's children. We're hoping to plan something else fun to try to make it up to them. Those cancellation decisions are agonizing!

As it turned out, we still had to do a little bit of driving that day, as we went to Faribault to help a family begin planning a funeral, which will take place this week. It was a slippery and unpleasant trip, and I was quite relieved Judy was driving!

We had to stop on the way to clear the car a little, so we pulled into St. John's United Church of Christ outside Nerstrand.





The trip back from Faribault wasn't quite as treacherous, so we kept wondering whether we had done the right thing in canceling. Who knows? Agonizing decisions, I tell ya.

Meanwhile, I now find myself unexpectedly without Sunday responsibilities! I imagine I'll end up at Grace for worship, simply because Grace and Vang are closest to me, and I'll be at Vang next weekend. I'll hardly know how to function on such a carefree Sunday morning, but I think it'll come back to me.