Weathering the Storm

A few weeks back we were hit with a tornado while we were at church.  We sat safely inside as very high winds and hail beat at the church.  Being confident the Lord would protect I made the joke, "I hope it didn't take away or trampoline!"  If I only knew!

After leaving church and as we pulled down our driveway I saw that indeed it had taken the trampoline!  I was in disbelief as we pulled closer to the house that there were windows broken on our out buildings and our house.  Paint had been scoured off one of our buildings, and clearly the roofs on all of the buildings and the house were very damaged.  Lost outdoor lights, my grill ($400 boo!), and our trampoline for which I was very concerned was now buried in our woods!  The added bonus was as I went upstairs I stepped on glass cutting my foot from a window I hadn't realized was broken.  Nice.

4 hours after the storm there was still hail on the ground that was larger than quarters.  I will add that photo soon.  The report was they were the size of golf balls!  FOUR!  You can see from the pics that it indeed looks as though someone had played all 19 holes (or is it 18 holes, I know nothing of golf) up against our house.  Bummer, BUT, we are here.  The tornado hadn't taken down our house.  The winds had not blown it away, and the small army of children who live here and fine and happy.  These are just 'things' and although I want to get it fixed right away, we are blessed that we are well.  

I do not know if it is the town of Camden is raining down on us or if we have carried our bad luck (which I don't believe in) to our new area, but we have weathered two tornadoes in the last 2 weeks.  This last one a few days ago took out the town of Orrick, MO just south of us.  Praying for those families that lost homes.  I am so fortunate that our damage from the first one was just cosmetic.  There is truly so many reasons to give thanks.  We are here, weathering the storms!

Here are some photos of the damage to the siding... enjoy, ehrrr, don't enjoy ;)  The coin in the photos s for size purposes.  It is a quarter so you can see most of these holes are HUGE!