JoyUnspeakable

Tonight we were invited to join Pastor Joe and his small group for dinner and bible study. We had the most amazing pot luck feast. Pasta and meatballs, ribs, mashed potatoes and gravy, pizza, some kind of rice, baked beans, lasagna, and more. There was even this giant fillet of spoon fish, which was delicious. Plus strawberry breads, coca-cola cake, and other desserts. What a spread!!
While there, we heard stories of the tornado, where people were when it hit, and more. There is a coffee table book you can get in the bookstore or online called 32 Minutes in May: The Joplin Tornado, which had some really amazing pictures of all of the damage. After driving around today, it’s really amazon how much work has already been done to clean this place up, but there is still plenty of restoring left to do. I’m really looking forward to seeing what is in store for us tomorrow.
Here is a picture of Pastor Joe and his wife Donna.

Pastor Pete is one of the pastors at the church we are staying. I started recording about a minute in to his amazing story. Unfortunately, we had an appointment to get to, so we needed to cut his story off. He said he will tell us the end of his story later. I hope he does! This part covers most of the event. Please watch! This is great!

Pastor Pete video

After lunch, we drove around Joplin, viewing all of the destruction. Almost all of the debris has been cleaned up, and many new houses have gone up. We even drove by the 7 new houses that were built by Extreme Makeover. There were many foundations remaining without any house on it. Lots of open areas where I am sure there used to be houses.

Here is our crew. We are at Red Hot and Blue or lunch.

From my left, going around the table:

Vi Nissly, Gifford Pierce, Brody and Buck Schmitt, Pastor Joel Schuster, Karin Pierce, Sarah and Curt Nissly.

The Nissly’s are from Dillsburg, PA. Everybody else at the table is from Marsh Creek Community Church.

We have safely arrived in Joplin. We are staying at the Wildwood Baptist Church. The basement has been converted to be a dorm, and has tons of bunk beds for us. We met up with a group of three, the Nissly’s, who are on our team. I guess at some point I should introduce the rest of our team. I’ll do that after lunch.

Remember the picture from when we left this morning? Did you see what we were all holding? They were care packages made from Marsh Creek Church Youth. Each one of us got our own individual package, including a decorated notebook for a journal, a collection of notecards with encouraging verses, and a bunch of snacks. So cool. Thanks, youth!!

We just passed the St. Louis Arch. Neat!
After breakfast, we started watching the Storm Chasers video of the EF-5 tornado in Joplin. It’s really crazy seeing the storm form and hearing the survivors tell stories of the event. This is really going to be an amazing week. if you haven’t seen the video, you can find other videos by searching for Joplin Tornado on YouTube.

We stopped for breakfast at Denny’s. I ordered the low fat veggie skillet. But Denny’s is running a peanut butter and chocolate promotion, and I couldn’t turn down the chocolate chip pancake batter hush puppies with a side of peanuts butter. People got a kick out of my order, but man those were yummy!

I think we have about 6 hours to go.

We just made it into Indiana. Pastor Joel was our first driver. He picked up the van, I’m guessing around 5:45pm. He finally gave up the wheel at 3:30am. That’s nearly a 10-hour stretch! At the gas station, he was saying how he could go longer, but he was getting uncomfortable from keeping his foot on the pedal so long.
I was able to get a little sleep, and I’m riding shotgun now. Buck has taken the wheel. After two minutes at the wheel, Buck found the cruise control. I wonder how far Joel would have gone had he known about that!

We were supposed to leave from the church at 6pm, but Pastor Joel and I didn’t get there until 6:15pm. And then Karen realized she forgot all of the food she made and froze. So we are running back to her house for that now.

I say everything happens for a reason. Maybe there is a bad accident that we will avoid because we are leaving an hour later. Who knows?

I’ll be honest. I don’t feel that comfortable about leaving the family behind right now. I pray that God keeps them safe while I am gone.