I hate tornadoes!

We woke up (well Brad did) in the middle of the night when our weather radio went off. Brad turned the TV on and checked where the tornadoes were. He felt we were safe so went back to sleep. We got up our usual time 5:40 and jumped in the shower to get ready to head out for another day of attempting to teach today's youth at school! Our phone rang at 5:55...Carrie wanted to know if we had gotten a call that school was cancelled. We had no idea what she was talking about b/c our lovely automated school answering service has not called our house. Well after jumping out of the shower and making several phone calls...then finally the TV announcing it...school was closed due to all of the bad weather in our county. We immediately started calling friends that we knew were in the possible line of that horrible tornado...they were all ok but there was lots of damage. We waited for all the boys to wake up and eat breakfast. Then we packed the truck and headed out to help friends salvage what they had left.

This was our first site of tornado damage. This church was leveled to the ground...lots of our friends attend this church. They are very upbeat and plan to still have church in their parking lot on Sunday morning...remember church is NOT a building...church is the congregation.

This is the house that Brad helped salvage all that he could from. He was there all day today. We (me and my wild boys) played in their front yard while I also watched 2 others so their parents could help load trucks to haul away the salvaged stuff before the rain started back again later today.

This family has a story to tell of how Jesus had His hand on them! Let me share...Their 6 week old little boy woke up about 1:20 and started crying for his 1:30 bottle. Mom got out of the bed and was comforting the baby while Dad went to the kitchen to fix the bottle to bring back to baby. When Mom was comforting baby she heard a loud noise and also felt horrible pressure in her ears. She ran and got daughter out of her bed went back and grabbed baby from the bouncy seat in their room and dad met them in their TINY hallway right outside the master bedroom. Seconds later...around 1:30 the tornado hit and this is the picture (above) that I saw when we pulled up this morning to help. This family escaped without even a scratch! WOW What does God have instore for them? is what I keep asking myself. They sat there in the dark because they had no flashlights or anything with them. They could tell by the lightening and thunder that the master bedroom had no ceiling...except the sky! They just sat there for a while and then the Pastor next door came to check on them because his house had been damaged too. He took them all safely to his house until daylight. The wall where the master bed was up against was now laying across their bed. If this little baby had not woken up and started to cry...more likely than not...this little 6 year old girl would be the only survivor at this house. Praise the Lord! I have chill bumps everytime I think of this...

Brad and I are always amazed at the strengh that a tornado has...look at these pictures of how a tornado makes these pine trees look like toothpicks...just snapped and twisted them in half!

the church that has nothing left but their front steps...The boys and I left Brad to continue to help load belonging. We headed home and went by the church that was destroyed.

This is Brandon's church. Brandon is 7 years old and is Carson's big buddy. His daddy was helping Brad load belonging this morning and I was watching him and his sister KK while everyone was loading things. We started talking about tornadoes, how they form, what they do, what they look like...just a kid-size discussion ALL about tornadoes. Brandon said "Ms. Amy, I hate tornadoes!"