Tornado

For the first time in the three years I have lived in Lansing a tornado hit. The kids and I were having a great time painting the front room while listening to music. The rain and wind were pretty heavy but I didn't think too much about it, we get a lot of heavy rain and wind here, but then through the beat of the music I heard the faint sound of the tornado sirens and it wasn't the first Saturday of the month when they test them. It was the real 'get in your basement now' tornado siren! The bigger kids grabbed their travel buddy, Jennifer with Joseph, Adam with Rachel and me with the baby and we quickly went down to our basement and turned on the Lansing news. We sat riveted to the television as they reported high damaging winds, flooding, power outages, and cloud rotation in Lansing. We waited glued to the reporters every word and watched as the severe storm moved across the radar screen, then the confirmation, a tornado had touched down in Lansing only a few miles from my home. Later learned it was a F3 tornado. The last time a tornado that big hit Lansing was 1977.
Thank heavens there were no fatalities or serious injuries but roofs were taken off houses, tall metal polls that held business signs were bent clean over, a bill board had been torn off an sent flying through a restaurant window, and many large old trees were uprooted and some had crashed through homes.
What really amazed me, is when it was all over and we came upstairs, it was so quiet. There was no rain, wind, or noise. I never would have known, by how it looked at that moment, the weather had been so violent and had done so much damage to places not to far from where I live. My prayers are with all the families who have lost so much to all the Midwest storms.

What Are The Chances?

I can hardly believe it. Our three years in Michigan are almost over. It truely feels like it has just started. I will miss Michigan, the people here have been so great. I love the green and the squirrels but I do look forward to more sunshine. It is pretty cloudy in Michigan
I took Eric to the airport on Aug 19th. He began his LLM classes the very next day. He says Miami is HUGE. I am quite nervous about living there. I am deffinately a small town girl.
One of Jennifer's leaders at camp has a son in-law who is working on his LLM in tax at the University of Miami. He e-mailed us about a month ago introducing himself and we e-mailed back and forth for a while. His wife had offered some great advice on safe places to live and we were so thankful for the help. We didn't have any contact with them for a couple weeks because I was waiting for Eric to get to Florida so he could look at houses.
Eric's first day of school was pretty nerve racking for him. Miami does a lot of stuff different including parking at the University. Eric, being the out going guy he is thought he would start asking people how to park, without getting a ticket. The first person he asked was just as new and frazzled as Eric but the second man invited him to pull around and he would help him. The first words out of the strangers mouth was he could tell Eric was a fellow member of the Church. How he could tell that we still don't know but, get this, it ended up being the same man we had been e-mailing back and forth with--what are the chances. Eric felt pretty good and made an instant friend. Eric has had constant contact with this man since he got to Miami and now this wonderful family has invited him to stay with them while Eric works to find a home for us. I feel so blessed that Eric and this man were at the right place at the right time.
I look forward to Sept 1st when Eric flies back to Michigan to move us all to Florida and I can meet this family.