His Mercies....new every morning!

A tornado touched down only 1.7 miles from our home early yesterday morning. David and I were awakened at 2:21am by a noise I will never forget: it sounded like an approaching train. I peeked out our window and the trees seemed like they were roiling around. It was raining heavily. Dave turned the tv on and we saw a SCARY radar on the weather. Moments later, we lost power.

We lit a couple of candles and grabbed Dan and Kristin and headed to our basement (Bree and Elly and our dogs sleep downstairs.) When we got down there, the tornado sirens went off...

We have a tiny battery-powered radio that we took downstairs with us. As we tuned in KFAB, we were stunned that no local radio stations were live...they were airing pre-recorded programming! We thought we would be tuning into weather coverage. They finally started covering the storm live at around 3 am.

Our local paper today called the storm the 'Stealth Tornado'...turns out that by the time the weather service issued a tornado warning and sounded the sirens, the tornado had passed us.(It touched down in our area around 2:25, we think.) The storm became severe so quickly that no one knew it was coming. See the following link for further stories, scary photos, etc. http://www.omahaworldherald.com/ If you view some of these photos, you will be completely amazed that not only did no one lose their life during this storm, there were not even any reports of any injuries. Truly a miracle. God is soooooo good.

As we have seen photos and video of the damage, the reality of the danger that narrowly missed us has begun to sink in and our thankfulness has been growing. I drove through nearby Walnut Grove Park this afternoon and was stunned to see 100 year old trees ripped up by their roots - huge trees. The power of these storms is amazing.

We are thankful to be in the hands of the One Who is all powerful and who loves us so much. And we pray that those who suffered any loss from this storm will receive comfort and be drawn close to Jesus. We pray that all their needs will be met.