Continuing our six-week road trip, we have spent the last week in Kansas City, MO, with friends and enjoying time in the prayer room at IHOP. If you have never been there, you are in for a real treat.
Today we head for home in Texas, and we purposely routed our drive homeward through Joplin, MO, to see the aftermath of the wide swath the recent tornado cut through the city.
The worst tornado in recorded American history, this storm robbed the life of 150 people, many are homeless, and the city is broken. Now there is a serious fungus outbreak.
We prayed as we slowly drove up and down the city streets. We took the out-of-the-way side neighborhood lanes too. It was heart wrenching. I have never seen anything like this. It looked like war, worse than war. Metal siding is twisted around the top of trees like ribbon. Large branches broken from huge trees are pierced through cars and sticking out of apartments. The bark is stripped from the trunks of trees. Mattresses with multiple holes in them hang from tree tops like Christmas ornaments.
There was a Home Depot that was a huge twisted heap of metal. They have the store reopened in the back in a huge, white tent. Also a Walgreen’s has their store reopened in a temporary building and has already bulldozed the rubble and is rebuilding. The new walls are up.
There were lots of temporary building up offering food, water, counseling, and aid. The Red Cross had trucks and signs all around as well as Samaritan’s Purse.
We saw American flags flying everywhere. It looked like people came back to their apartments or homes and erected flags. This was a great sign of the indomitable American spirit to rise above circumstances.
