Winter Nightmare

We stayed so busy in California that we didn't watch the news even once. Tuesday night we flew into St. Louis and drove back to Lebanon. It was quite cold, but the roads were dry and clear. It wasn't until we started down our street that we noticed the devestation here. A huge ice storm hit right after we left to go to CA. Our street had no power and half the trees were toppled by the weight of the ice. We almost couldn't get into our driveway because of all the debris. Our house was ice-cold and had no power. We tried to get into a motel room but every room in town was taken. Since it was after midnight and we didn't want to wake anyone, we ended up driving to the church and sleeping on the pews (the church had power). Our town is devestated. There are hundreds still without power (us included). Some guys from the church hooked up a generator for us last night, so we were finally able to go home. Pray for our church as we seek to minister to the community during this hard time. The clean-up and recovery will probably take months. I snapped a couple of pics from the church porch a few minutes ago.