One piece at a time... it's all you can do.

"Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says." James 1:22

I remember, as a kid, going to the basement countless times to take shelter in case of a tornado but it seems like it's happening more regularly this year. For the record, I am not enjoying it but have not lost anything or anyone that I personally know to the storms so far. Crazily, it seems like it could be more of a "when" not "if" kind of thing with the number of devastating tornadoes that have happened in the last few months. I hug my people a little tighter these days but I know that there are so many that cannot do the same because their people are now gone... stolen from them in an instant. Even more have lost their homes. Last month, an area of St. Louis was hit but we were lucky; there were no fatalities. Seriously, we have been VERY lucky!

Just a few days following the tornado in St. Louis hundreds were killed in the south. I remember the next morning being on the phone with a friend and at the beginning of the ten minute conversation the death toll was 85 and by the time we finished it was 135. It continued to climb. The final count for the tornado that hit Joplin, MO yesterday is yet to be known. Again, I know that my people there are okay... well, alive and physically unharmed anyway but so many are not. Many are wailing from their great loss and I wonder what we will all do. Will we sit around and talk about how awful it is or will we do something?



Here are a few things that I know are taking place right now:

One Outfit: put together one outfit from each person in your home to donate to people in Joplin

Calvary Church is putting together a team of people to go to Joplin for the weekend, call the church for info: 636.939.4343

Donations: you can drop off bottled water, diapers, clothes, etc to Calvary Church and they will take it with them this weekend.


After last month's local tornado, I spent a day off volunteering with Service International and my sweet friends Ripper and Bo cleaning up one home that was decimated here. I was so grateful to have Ripper and Bo with me. We didn't really talk much but having a familiar face to make eye contact with between trips back and forth was really nice. We started our day on a small bus and were dropped of with the instruction to "go over the hill and you'll see what to do." We certainly did. Once on top of the hill, we found ourselves looking into the back of what was left of someone's home and right into their nursery. They changing table was still there but the crib was gone. We saw what was the first floor of one house... nothing was left but the stove and the bathtub. That house had many many people working so our small group wandered over to another house and began to just pick up one piece at a time. That's really all you could do. One might think that you'd get emotional as you pick up kids' toys, cookbooks, photographs of happy couples and the like but there simply isn't time for emotion. One piece at a time... it's all you can do.

The following pictures were taken that day with my iphone.