SNOW IN San Antonio!

San Antonio and Snow doesn't happen. ITs like a heat wave in the arctic. At least until today. All week people have been saying it's gonna snow friday. I thought, yeah right! But sure enough, driving down IH 10, big ole snow flurries in the middle of the Sunny cold day. I couldn't believe it at first. The last time we had snow of any significance was in '85. The first year I moved to San Antonio with my parents. There was so much snow we made snowmen and had snowball fights. It was like home since we had just moved from Boston, MA.

Seeing the huge snowflakes reminded me of a story I read in a book called "Wild Goose Chase" by Mark Batterson. It's About Wilson Bentley, who grew up on a farm in Jericho, Vermont. As a young boy, Bentley developed a fascination with snowflakes. Most people go indoors during snowstorms - not Wilson. He would run outside when the flakes started falling, catch them on black velvet, look at them under a microscope, and take photographs of them before they melted. He said, "Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind."

The first known photographer of snowflakes, Bentley pursued his passion for more than fifty years. He collected 5,381 photographs. And then he died a fitting death—a death that symbolized and epitomized his life. Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley contracted pneumonia while walking six miles through a severe snowstorm and died on December 23, 1931. Batterson adds, "And that is how I figured out how I want to die. No, I don't want to die from pneumonia. But I do want to die doing what I love. I am determined to pursue God-ordained passions until the day I die. Life is too precious, too beautiful to settle for anything less.