HOPE & LIGHT

Monday, July 8, 2024, started as most of my days start. I ate breakfast, enjoyed a cup of coffee, and spent some time reading my Bible, starting where I had left off the day before.

After spending time in prayer, I noticed it was nearly 11am, time to go to my desk and start working on the memoir I’m writing. But before I got up to go to my desk, everything changed.

The wind suddenly started blowing, and my first thought was that we were about to be hit by Hurricane Beryl. Then the whole house started shaking. The wind kept increasing until a window close to where I was sitting imploded. I looked at my lap tray and it was covered with glass shards.

At the same time, Mitch was in another room, sitting next to a window, where he saw a tornado hit our large steel building, blowing the roll-up doors completely off the building and tearing holes in the roof and sides. The tornado also hit two other outbuildings on our property, removing the whole roof and the shop at the back and totally destroying the kennel and chicken coup and also the outbuilding closest to our house.

Also, a 6-foot long and 1-foot wide piece of sheet metal from the steel building flew through a window, into the living room, barely missing me, as it lodged behind the chair I was sitting in.

A few seconds later, the tornado hit our home and did extensive damage. Most of the windows were broken, the entire metal roof was blown off along with the metal covering of the front porch and carport. The roof of the back porch was blown away, along with part of the flooring.

By God’s grace and miraculous protection, none of us were injured. Our home was badly damaged, but things can be replaced and our family was safe. As we all left the house, we were giving thanks for God’s miraculous deliverance.

Harvest Church, where we are members, covered the cost of a motel room for us that was across the road from the church building. After a few days, Mitch asked his sister Shirley if Amy and I could stay with her until he was able to find a temporary home that would meet our needs. She agreed.

Shirley came to pick us up while Mitch stayed in the motel so he could be available to handle all of the things needed, such as signing up for help from FEMA, packing boxes of our possessions, and finding a rental home where the three of us could live until our house was ready to move back in.

While Amy and I were with Shirley, Mitch was busy helping several men and women from our church pack most of our belongings, eventually moving them into a large storage area owned by a family in our church. Our church has been a huge blessing during this time

Surprisingly, Mitch quickly found a place that would meet our needs until we are able to return to our own home. We were only in San Antonio for about two weeks, before returning to our small town in East Texas. On Sunday, July 21st, we were reunited as a family in a nice, fully-furnished, small cottage just a few miles from our damaged home.

Before Amy and I came back to our Jasper, Mitch and a couple men from our church had a busy week of moving boxes of our possessions and a few needed pieces of furniture to our temporary home. This cottage is usually used as a weekend rental for visitors to our small town, but we are grateful that the owner, a Christian who attends Jasper Cowboy Church, for being willing to rent it to us until our home is ready for us to move back in.

We are living on a Homestead with a variety of animals, which has been an interesting experience. We often wake up to the crowing of a rooster, but one morning our daughter Amy awakened to look out her window and see a cow directly watching everything she was doing. We all had a laugh about that.

In late July, Mitch met with a FEMA inspector. He took photos and made note of the extensive damage to our home. Since then, Mitch has found the required two contractors. One of them has already started working on an estimate of repairs that includes an itemized list of materials and labor, and the second one will be starting soon.

As soon as Mitch receives the estimates from the contractors, the paperwork will be submitted to FEMA. We have no idea how long it will take FEMA to decide how much they will give us to do the necessary repairs. But it looks likely we will still be in this temporary home when 2025 begins.

This has been a challenging time, and it is still far from over. But it’s also been a time of blessing, as God has graciously provided for all our needs. Our hearts are overflowing with gratefulness for all of those from Harvest Church and Jasper Cowboy Church who have helped us since July 8th. We have seen the goodness of the Lord through His people, both those from local churches and through many other believers away from here.