The past 36 hours have been amazing! Late Thursday afternoon a tornado ripped through parts of Alajuelita destroying homes and reeking havoc on the city. My family and home are fine, but the team house took a rather serious hit. It looks as though some debris entered though a wall on the upper level toward the back of the house and blew through and exited on the opposite wall.
I've been amazed at God's provision through the whole experience. The first way God protected us is physically. My family was uninjured even though the tornado passed within 400 meters of my house. My daughter and her friend Laine had just run up to the "MegaSuper" to pick-up a few things for Molly. MegaSuper is about two blocks away from my house and is similar to a grocery store back home. While they were in the store it started to rain, and then within a few minutes part of the roof came off!
I've been amazed at God's provision through the whole experience. The first way God protected us is physically. My family was uninjured even though the tornado passed within 400 meters of my house. My daughter and her friend Laine had just run up to the "MegaSuper" to pick-up a few things for Molly. MegaSuper is about two blocks away from my house and is similar to a grocery store back home. While they were in the store it started to rain, and then within a few minutes part of the roof came off!
The second way God has provided is through our great friends. I was not home when the storm hit, but our friends Duke and Candy helped Molly and the boys with the immediate crises. By the time I got home Duke had left to check on the girls at the MegaSuper, while Candy kept my boys calm. They made the experience less frightening and later that night they had an ice cream candlelight dinner. They had no electricity and all of the of ice cream in the freezer was going to melt! In caring for my family they freed me to deal with the aftermath of the storm.
I went to the team house and assessed the damage and stayed to protect the house from looters! I called my other good friend Ernie, to tell him what had happened, and that his house here in Alajuelita was undamaged, in spite of the fact that the house four houses down lost the entire roof! He wanted to help, so he sent a generator with his son Storm, who drove late into the night to deliver the generator!
Then within an hour my cell phone started to ring! Many of our Tico friends were calling to see if we were safe and what they could do help us! It was an amazing thing to experience. I had several of my homeless drug addict friends come to check on me and offer to help.
The next day people showed-up with tools and strong backs and helped us repair and clean the team house. God used these friends to transform our disaster site back in a team house. Needless to say we are not completely prepared for our mission team to arrive today, but we are a lot better off than we were 24 hours ago.
Tornados are an extremely rare occurrence in Costa Rica and this is the first one ever to hit Alajuelita. Because of this, the homes are not designed to withstand a tornado. The news has reported that an estimated 3,000 homes were destroyed or lost their roofs. God has provided for some of these families as well as we are planning to use this upcoming team to bring some relief and assistance to the families effected by the storm. The mayor stopped by the house yesterday to ask if we could help...it was neat to be able to say to him "Yes we have a team coming Saturday, and we can help."
In closing I want to ask you pray. Pray that God would use all this chaos and tragedy to bring Him glory. Pray that this team will be able to minister during this time of crisis. Pray that God will continue to keep us safe dealing with the aftermath of the storm. Pray they will be able to get the electricity at the team house on quickly. Pray that God will continue to provide teams and the much needed resources to help our community recover.
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