Prayers for Moore

The reality of the destruction of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma is overwhelming...

There were other tornadoes that hit different cities in Oklahoma, but the magnitude of the destruction in Moore leaves is hard for the mind to grasp...

 

Last Friday Greg, Louis, Caleb and 12 other teens and adults made up a team that headed to Moore Oklahoma to do whatever they were called upon to do to help with disaster relief there. 

 

I was so blessed to have a friend volunteer to watch my five kids and my niece so that a friend and  I could head down there yesterday to join the team in their work...

 

(My brother's family had driven down from Wisconsin to work... that is why I had my niece.  My sister's family from the St. Louis area also came in to help)

 

 

 

 

We were assigned to work in zone 9.  They assign zones to the different areas so that they can assign volunteers to specific areas and homes in that area...

 

 

It is sort of hard to see, but a lot of times they have to either write the number on the home or driveway since many times street signs are gone... and most times in the hardest hit areas there aren't any house numbers visible any longer...

 

In the hardest hit areas... they label the homes after Fema inspects (before any volunteers can come into help at all) with the inspector number, human lives lost, and pets lost as well...

 

 

The absolute power of the tornadoes to take cars or telephone poles and toss them around like toys is almost hard to wrap your mind around... even when you see it right before you...

 



You can see the two small tents that the homeowners were probably staying in on their property...
 

 This is one of the hardest hit areas in Moore... It looks so much like Joplin...
It was just rubble as far as your eye could see... not too much else standing at all. 

It was so sad... knowing and seeing the areas where these homeowners had lost pretty much everything...  And if anything was left it was so severely damaged.

The homeowners that I was able to speak with really had some amazing perspectives.  A younger lady, Helen, who only had one room left standing from her home, over and over again repeated how lucky she was.  Her home was gone, but her and her parents had survived. 

She was so so grateful for all of the volunteers that had come to help.

 

 

 

This is the amazing group of people teens and adults that we served with.  We were assigned to a home that didn't have severe damage but had so much debris on the property... Our group spent 3 days cleaning up debris.  I know my kids came home having made new friends with the owners kids and even the owners.  It was amazing all of the things that we found.  The strange thing is that none of that debris belonged to this home... You couldn't help but wonder how far it had come... Whose home it had come from.

 

Truck load after truck load of garbage, wood, debris,... there was so much. 

The group accomplished much and I was so proud of the adults and kids that worked together here.

Today after trying to clear debris from inside of one of the ponds the kids were able to have a little fun swimming in the pond with the owners children. 

I know it was fun for my boys and I am sure was hopefully a bright spot amidst a very stressful and traumatic week for them. 

 

 

 



 

As much as I am sure the people of Moore were blessed by all the volunteers that were working there... we too were so blessed to be there.  It was amazing to see the faith based community at work.

 

Group after group of volunteers were hitting the streets of Moore... I pray that the people there felt the strong love of Jesus for them amidst the tragedy of this past week.

 

Any homeowner I had a chance to talk to seemed to really want to share their story.  Stories like that need to be told over and over again... It seemed like all you had to do was open the door and they would start to share. 

 

I know this Immanuel group will be going back and we are excited to be planning on taking a team down from our new church this summer.

 

The work is started in Moore but there will be work to do there for days, months and years to come...

Please continue to pray for the people there... there is much healing needed...