Helping Hands

As you all know and have heard about the terrible storms that came through Alabama on April 27. There were many tornados that leveled cities around us and hundreds of people killed here.. We were very fortunate to be kept safe from the storms and feel so blessed that we were protected. We awoke to tornado sirens at 5:00am Wednesday April 27. Kanyon and I were the only ones that heard the sirens; Kanyon came into my room and we turned on the TV to see if we needed to take cover. It looked like the storms were a little North of us so I told him to go back to bed and I would keep my eye on the weather. Well at 5:30am the sirens went off again and the weather man told us to get in a shelter right away. We grabbed the kids out of bed and ran down into our storm shelter in our basement. We sat in there hearing the wind,rain,hail etc. Our power flickered a few times and then went out completely. So at 5:30am we are down in a dark room praying we will be kept safe. We were, but when we came out of the basement there was SO much damage. Trees everywhere, on houses on roads, power lines down etc. Little did we know that the HUGE storm was yet to come. At around 5:00pm that evening was when the real huge storm hit. Cities completely leveled and people killed. We again spent the evening in our storm shelter with no power. (which we got back on about 3 days later) It was a scary and surreal experience. We were very blessed. We received no damage at all. So when the church set up Tornado relief we jumped at the chance to help. Hundreds of people came in from out of state and Russ and I were asked to be the Team Leaders for a group of about 30 people. We were given the Mormon Helping Hands Shirts and we went to work. It has been an amazing experience to be a part of a disaster of this magnitude. We even had our church in the parking lot because our church still didn't have power. Russ got some pretty bad Poison Ivy after helping with tree removal poor guy! The people out here are amazing. The cashiers at the grocery stores or the guy at the McDonald's drive through ask how your and your family are doing. Everyone is pulling together and helping. It is amazing to watch. I even saw Air Force One with President Obama in it flying overhead to look at the damage. Wow.