The devastation that has occurred in Sweet Home Alabama cannot be explained in words. When you see it with your own eyes it is shocking; it makes you sick at your stomach. Today, we went back to school, which I think is a good for these children. I think these babies need to get away from everything. They need a place that feels familiar; they need that normalcy. Many of the teachers have 6 and 7 students who lost everything.Our school is amazing and have a great plan in action to meet each child's needs. I ask you specifically to pray for these precious babies that do not understand why their home has been taken away from them.
As you know, the tornado destroyed much of my hometown of Pleasant Grove. Below are some images I snapped while trying to make it to my parent's house. These are parts of the neighborhood where I grew up. We moved to this wonderful neighborhood when I was 4. I recently left at age 23 when I got married. This place held a lot of precious memories....
Most of the destruction started on the street behind my parent's house.
The picture below is the house I grew up in...
We had minor damage compared to our neighbors; we had roof damage, busted windows, and all of our trees were down.
This was mom's favorite trees and they missed the house by inches.
Through all of this, you have to have something to laugh about. All of mom's trees in her yard are down, and she always talks about getting this dead tree down before it falls on the house. Well, after it was all said and done, all of mom's trees were down but "big boy" was still standing straight as an arrow! He outlasted them all!! That's usually how it goes... we just laughed when we saw it...
My man helping clear trees...
I also mentioned that much of the community of Concord, where we currently live, got destroyed. They are currently not letting people through the check points, I have driven through, but chose to not take pictures.
The National Guard guards it at night to prevent looting. Sadly, there have been looters arrested in Pleasant Grove. That is a topic I will not go into because it gets me fired up. I joined my church in helping out in Concord. We helped two elderly ladies who had very large trees EVERYWHERE on their property; blocking them from entering their driveways. They were so thankful and it was a blessing being able to help them.
Through all of this devastation it is AMAZING to see the outpouring of help. It will make you cry seeing everyone helping one another.
We cannot make it go away, but we can make it better.
I heard this statement from my Sunday school teacher and I think it has a lot of meaning, "Tragedy is God's megaphone for reaching his people."
In the midst of the storm, God gets ALL the glory.
Many have asked through e-mail if our home was damaged and if the home we are building was damaged. Our home now was not damaged nor is the home we are building. I am very thankful for that. The destruction in our community started on the street behind us. I will not be doing any house building updates for a while. So many people in my community, in my hometown, at my school, and many of my friend's and student's homes were taken from them. I just cannot bring myself to post about that at this time. I am still taking pictures of each step and saving them as drafts and I promise to post at a later time. I will be continuing my blog, just without those posts for a few weeks. It just does not feel right at this moment.
Thank you SO much for all of your sweet comments and emails from those concerned :)!
I am WAY behind on reading your fabulous blogs. We were out of power until Saturday night (I think) and our internet has been down. I hope to catch up very soon!
Thank you again for your prayers and PLEASE continue praying for Alabama and all the other states affected by the tornado.
I hope I covered everything I have been asked... if not, feel free to email me with any questions! :)
Hope you have a BLESSED week!!
