Pixiemom

We got to the church at a little after 5:30 for the first day of VBS which started at 6:00. Everything went well. A few of the groups got a little off schedule, but it was okay. The last 20 minutes were for Mission Rally, where all of the groups gathered in the sanctuary together. We sang the Theme song on the way in, had an opening prayer, and had the pledges to the flags and the Bible. Then we did the VBS Motto and Bible verse, sang the song for the day, and had our Mission video for the day. After the video, we had a closing prayer and VBS was done. Well, that’s the way it was supposed to go. On Monday, we got all the way to the Bible verse before the tornado sirens went off. As I was already up there getting ready to lead the kids in the song of the day, I just told them to quietly line up and we’d head downstairs. The kids went downstairs nice and orderly. The younger ones wanted to go into the nursery down there, but there are windows in that room, so we just lined the hallway down there. A few kids started whimpering a bit. Amie was among them as she gets scared with the really strong weather. I just reminded them that Jesus was with us and that He loves us and started a song time. We sang “Jesus Loves Me”, “Zacchieus”, “This Little Light of Mine”, and “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”. About that time, we were told that the tornado warning had passed, but the thunderstorm was still raging so we let the kids play in the nursery until it settled enough. Parents had joined us downstairs at the beginning. Finally, about 9:15 or so, the storm had settled enough to let the kids go. We got the church all closed up and we left about 9:30.

That was just the beginning of our adventure. As we were driving home, we saw a few branches down here and there at first, but they were bigger and more abundant the closer to home we traveled. Our church is north of the highway and our house is south of the highway (for reference at the moment). As we crossed the bridge over the highway, we came upon quite a sight. The electricity was out and many flashing lights, blue, red, white, and yellow seemed to be everywhere. We saw trees downed all over the roads. A car had accidently driven over one of them and some of the citizens of the community were directing traffic away. We had to take quite a zig zag route home as so many roads were blocked by trees. We finally made it home and saw the tree between our neighbor’s house and the house on the other side of them had fallen. It looked like it had fallen on our neighbor’s house. As Jeremy slowed down to park in our driveway, I jumped out to check on our neighbor. I found that other than having her back door blocked, the tree hadn’t knocked any of her house in or even broken a window and than she was fine. Then I went to the house behind us since I knew that the lady there has back problems and is unable to get out and has two disabled sons living with her. She said they were fine, though one of her sons was extremely irritated that they didn’t have electricity and that his schedule had been interrupted. The guy on the other side of her was hooking her sump pump up to a generator to make sure her basement didn’t flood.

As I headed home, I smelled smoke and found that Jeremy and the kids were downstairs by the fireplace warming up a bit before heading to bed. We were all a bit cold from getting a little wet. After Jeremy told the kids a “Little Ol’ Man” story, we sent them to bed. Jeremy and I sat by the fire for a bit longer while it died down and then we headed to bed as well.

Stay Tuned for More Posts… I plan on telling you the rest of the week tomorrow.