The Moments that make up Our Lives

I don't even know where to start - The past few days have been surreal. Driving around town has been devastating, heartbreaking, and humbling. As most of you already know - Nappanee was hit by a F3 tornado Thursday night around 10:30. The tornado went across a twenty mile path damaging homes and businesses along the way.

Thursday night I was babysitting with Mike for two little girls south of Nappanee. Just before the tornado hit, the girls were in bed, and Mike and I were sitting in the living room watching the weather outside the window. My mom had called earlier to report that bad weather was headed our way and to just watch the news and be alert. As the wind started to blow harder and the porch swing was banging up against the house more often, the power went off, I looked at Mike and said "Maybe we should get the girls..." Just as I said that we saw the tree in the front yard bend (it was a smaller tree) to a 90 degree angle. At that moment Mike grabbed my hand and said "grab Karli - I'll get Kelsi". We got the girls out of bed and ran down into the basement. I could hear the howling outside and just started praying. I still have no idea how we escaped harm and damage. We were right in the path of the tornado and it was as if it just skipped over the house we were at.

However, others were not so lucky. The east side of Nappanee has been destroyed. Dairy Queen and Taco Bell are basically no more. Friends of our family and my boss and her husband lost their homes. It's been an emotional few days as we have helped them clean up, gather their personal belongings (what we could find) and begin the process of basically starting over.

Nappanee will rebuild. We came together yesterday plus 3,000 others to help this community gain back what we lost. We will overcome this, and I praise God for the blessings we have seen through this. There were only minor injuries and we are blessed with so many great friends that will continue to help.