Good to be Home

The kids and I got home last night around 5. Driving into town was surreal. Seeing is definitely believing. Spending many years in Kansas as a child, I don't think I totally understood how much damage a tornado could do until I saw a town after it'd been hit by one. Similarly, seeing our town after it had been hit by one of the largest hurricanes, although only a cat 2, and the destruction it left here just makes you sad. So many lives have been affected. We have several church members whose homes have been badly damaged and I know of two people, one I work closely with whose home was totally destroyed, including most things in it.

As Ella and I went to HEB this afternoon to pick up some groceries, we took a different route out of our neighborhood and saw that nearly every single fence had been blown down, just snapped at the posts. Ella said, "Momma, do you know why our house was not hurt?" I asked why, and she said, "Before we went to Mimi's I was praying in my room and God got my message, so our house wasn't hurt much at all."

We do have a lot to be thankful for; a home with very little damage, power that returned surprisingly pretty quickly, and loving families that helped us out in so many ways this past week. We are so thankful for all of those things and will continue to pray and do what we can to help others less fortunate. This morning we started the day at church with an informal praise and worship time. Then Mark Thomas, Ella and I helped to rake up all the debris from the day school playground along with several other church members. Max went with another church member to saw into chunks some larger trees that had fallen at a woman's house and help to carry them to the curb. Don't worry he wasn't the one using the chain saw. And Mark took Ben and helped clear debris from another man's home.

Tomorrow we're having our two services outside, mostly just to be a presence for the community as they drive past our corner and also to combat the fact that the church still does not have power. We'll be praising God for sure.

The kids will have next week off from school. That makes a total of two weeks for this hurrication. Would you believe that they've only been in school for 10 days so far this year? They're hardly complaining but I'm definitely ready for them and us to get back into our normal routine.