Tornadoes

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Wow – were we ever protected last night!

A big church in the next town over was having a Passion Play, so a few of us from church decided to go. Stephen and I hadn’t decided one way or the other, until Annie called us up to say that her in-laws had volunteered to watch Bug so we could go. We said, “Great,” and made plans from there.

When we finally left, we rode with the Hoppers to the theater (not movie-house theater – an old-fashioned play-and-musical theater). We noticed that the sky was icky looking, and we just figured that it was a nice ferocious thunderstorm.

We got there, found seats, and the play started. Partway through, I heard something and elbowed Stephen. I wanted to know if the noise I heard was tornado sirens. He wasn’t sure, but he heard it too. It was during one of the louder songs, so it wasn’t readily evident that there was a siren sounding outside.

When the play was finished, and the pastor went on stage to give a message, he warned us that during the play there had been some tornadoes that had touched down north of town. I wasn’t too overly worried; we live an hour south of town. Not that I wanted to be out in it, but knowing we’d be driving away from it all was reassuring.

It rained the whole way home, and the lightning was amazing. When we got near the Hoppers’ house, we noticed that there was an awful lot of debris on the road – debris that hadn’t been there when we left. We figured it had been quite the storm, and maybe there’d been some hail. There had been hail all right – when we got to the house, Mrs. Hopper picked up a huge handful of ice! Thankfully, we didn’t find any huge dents in our van from it.

We left their house and drove through town to go get Sam. The power was out in the north half of town. Still we didn’t think much of it.

Just outside town, we drove by a ton of emergency vehicles. Upon closer look, we could see that a house had been completely leveled by a tornado. Leveled as in the highest pile of stuff couldn’t have been much taller than 3 or 4 feet high.

It turns out that the building that was leveled was a house of prostitution. Unfortunately, it appeared that somebody had gotten hurt. With it being a Friday night, chances of more than one person being in the building are pretty good.

What really gets me is something that I prayed for about a week ago, if that. We drive by this place every time we go to church. From the looks of the building, Stephen and I thought that it was a porn place. The building looked a bit shaky, so I prayed that if it really was a porn place, that God would level it. My thinking was to just pray that the business wouldn’t be able to continue. I prayed that and forgot about it. I will tell you, though, that that prayer came to mind immediately when we drove by it last night. God certainly answered that prayer.

We picked up Sam and went home (the family he stayed with lived even further away from where the tornado touched down than we do). The roads were almost completely dry, and you couldn’t even tell it had rained at all. Our house had barely gotten any of the storm.

I woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing outside my bedroom window, and I cannot help but be thankful. There are people who lost a lot last night. I think I heard that there were 5 or 6 tornadoes spotted over town, and another town nearby got hit hard as well – yet we still have everything. We are so blessed.