What a MONTH! April 23-May 17, 2011

After getting home from the Philippines on Wednesday, Jamie and I headed to Nashville on Friday morning for getting our Lads to Leaders group checked in.  We went to the Opryland Hotel and got our group checked in and then went to eat at El Chico's.  While we were eating out on the deck on a beautiful night, another young lady trying to make it big in Nashville was singing outside.  She was really good but there are really so many good singers trying to make it and so few ever do.
We then went to my aunt's house and spent the night there with Kankie and my cousin Connie.  She is my dad's oldest sister and in amazing shape to be over 90!  We slept well and left early before they woke up the next morning and headed to the Opryland to meet our group. The group from Trenton arrived at about 8:30 AM and we wandered around the hotel and then had donuts and then a light lunch before our Bible Bowl team competed.  As they started we kept watch and knew they had done well.  After the afternoon and a trip to the Hard Rock Cafe to reward them for their good work, we returned to the hotel and the ballroom for the awards ceremony.  Finally at the end of the awards they announced the winners in the Bible Bowl and our group erupted in applause when it was announced that our group had finished second!  It was really a great effort by the kids, their parents and the adults that helped coach the team.
We went to our rooms at about midnight and Jamie and I had to leave to get back to Trenton in time for Sunday services so we had a short night..The alarm went off at 4:30 AM and we headed home. 
We had an uneventful trip home and had good number at services and had lunch at Rafael's and headed home for a short nap.  At 4:00 PM we met Jennifer Hartline and her family and a group of friends at the church building and took her to Lookout Creek and she was baptized.  It was her request and it was a beautiful location....in fact the place where many of our older members had been baptized before the new auditorium was built in 1974 with a baptistery. So it sure made for a wonderful day!
Monday and Tuesday we were planning to be in Montgomery for a little time with the kids but I told Jamie and them that I was just too tired and wanted to stay home and have a quiet and restful week.  That would turn out to be somewhat ironic words.
Wednesday morning April 27, 2011 dawned clear and nice so I went out and had coffee on the picnic table at about 7 AM and then about 7:30 the wind started to pickup and then the clouds started rolling in.  Just after 8 AM I got a Tornado Warning and got Jamie up and in the hall and then started hearing the wind howl and the trees start snapping!  It was over in about a minute and I went out to see 8 trees downed in the yard but the house and all vehicles spared.  I thought it was a big mess and a big problem until the day would unwind and bring destruction on a level never seen by me before or ever inflicted on Dade County and others through out the South.
There were at least 3 other Tornado Warnings and a great deal of apprehension.  After lunch time Jamie and I went to the church building as a safe haven to open it as a shelter.  We would have as many as 30 people jameed into and under a stairwell as the worst storm blew threw the area just after 5:00 PM. Winds that we would later learn exceeded 135 miles per hour blew across the lot.  When we went back out and looked around, three major neighborhoods in Trenton had been virtually destroyed by the storm that would be identified as an EF-3 tornado.
Amazingly there was just one family in the church, Reed and Starla Gross who lost their home and thankfully they were safe at his parent's home on Lookout Mountain.  We did not have a single church member injured and only the one house seriously damaged. We did have about 7 or 8 families whose homes suffered varying degrees of damage to their property but all were safe.
After a night without power, I got up early the next morning and could not believe what I saw.  As I drove around a familiar place I could not even recognize what street I was trying to turn down, as there was so much devastation in Edgewood.  On the other side of highway 11 the Village Green Apartments were virtually gone.  If that morning the news had said that 50 people had been killed in Trenton, I would have thought that "it could have been worse".
The news would finally be that there were 2 killed in Dade County but in the surrounding counties there were many more killed.  We were truly very fortunate. 
On Thursday, we went to Reed and Starla's and helped them go through the remains of the their house and getting the things out of their house that could be saved.  We spent part of the afternoon walking over a field looking for some items that they couldn't find such as Addilyn's blanket and their wedding picture. 
As we went to bed without water or power but very thankful we had been spared.  For the next 10 days, Dakota Spencer and Ivan Wallin ran the Bobcat and a number of us were on chainsaws and removing brush from folks' homes/  We started and cleaned up the yards of our church members first and then worked on folks in the community and up on the mountain that had trees down that insurance didn't cover.  For about the next 10 days, I slept extremely well!  The power and water were back on after 3 days and we began the job of helping those in the area affected by the tornadoes.
We helped over 120 families in the first three weeks with everything from food to clothing and even help with their homes.  The response from the Trenton church family was incredible.  We had over 40 of our members work on the disaster relief.  We also had groups from Trion, Dasher, Chickamauga, and Cookville, TN come and help with the efforts.  We have been blessed that we have received over $5000 from congregations and individuals from Wyoming, Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee and more is already promised.  It has been great to feel the love and concern of other Christians around the country sharing with us in our recovery.
We have had the building converted into a warehouse and recovery center and our members have been great to work there every day serving those that are recovering from the storm.  We have already have 6 of those people visit with us at our worship services, so we are very excited about the possiblilities that have been afforded us. 
In the first few days of this week (May15) things have slowed down a little bit but picked up some as the other relief centers have closed in Trenton as FEMA has taken over.   In what truly is a great tribute to the area, a FEMA official working here said, "If everywehre was like it is here, we (FEMA) would be out of business.  I have never seen neighbors and churches taking care of each other like they have here." Tha makes me pretty happy and proud to live here!
After 10 days since the storm, Jamie and I headed to Montgomery for a couple of days with the girls and their families. We had a wonderful visit and I got a chance to have dinner with Matt and spend some time with him for the first time and really enjoyed that. Laurie is still liking the work at Wilson and Wilson but there are some things she has found that aren't perfect at work, as we all find in most situations.
Leigh and Nate are really busy getting ready for the wedding and looking for a place to move into.  It seems as though that they have found a nice little home in the historical area of Capitol Heights in Montgomery. She is staying busy as the summer recruiting season will be complicated this year with showers and then a wedding but I am confident she'll work it out.....be a little stressed but she'll do great!
Louise and Dirt are doing well and she is getting into the swing of caring fore 3 kids everyday but I think she has gained new respect for her mother and others who have raised 3 or more!  We did take the whole group out to lunch one day at the Farmers' Market and they were very well behaved!  Dirt is back in the swing teaching a class at Faulkner and working toward his doctorate also.   
Oh yea, and Ellie....she is doing great and growing and just turned 7 months old and is learning new things and delighting her parents, her aunts and grandparents with something new everyday!  It is incredible to me how quickly she is growing up and changing.  It has really been a blessing to get ot be a grandparent!  Looking forward to her and her mom and dad and aunts beign here the first weekend in June for Leigh and Nate's shower.  Dirt, Louise and Ellie are staying for a week and I am really excited about that!
As tomorrow marks a month since returning home from the Philippines, it is hard for me to look back and realize how much has happened since then and how God has afforded us opportunities to serve others.