Canton Craziness

The first weekend of May, a few my church girlfriends who are (this is fun!) mutual friends of Bonner's got together for a girls weekend at the Shining Star (Uncle Buddy and Aunt Suzie's ranch in Canton).  It was SO much fun!  I drove down after school on Friday and we hung out all night and went to Canton all day on Saturday!  Oh, and another super surprise was that Elizabeth was in town from Spain!!!  YAY!  My "church friends" world collided with my "sister-cousins" world, and it was so much fun!

I happened to take some pictures of the ranch as we drove out on Saturday morning...

It was so green and peaceful!  I had no idea that this image would be totally changed in 12 hours.

We went to Trade Days and had a great time!  This is an example of the type of decor I like, but I'm tortured by.  I have this false sense of self and feel like I should be able to make something like that myself instead of paying $40 for it!  Ahhhh, but alas, I haven't done it yet.

Then we drove home for dinner when the rain started picking up.  The sky looked ominous.  We ran inside the house and within 2 minutes, all the power went out.  About 10 minutes after that, everyone's cell phone started clanging that alarming "tornado warning" sound, and we all huddled in the bathroom under the stairs. We heard a LOUD wind and heavy rain for about 1 minutes and then complete silence.  Almost a mute kind of sound.  We walked out to find this...

It didn't seem that scary.  We didn't have cell service, but I managed to get a few texts out to my family.  They told me that a tornado had touched ground in Canton.  We figured that what we had just experienced was merely the outside winds of the tornado because the trees in the distance looked damaged, but that's about all we could see from the windows of the house.  Throughout the evening, we huddled in the bathroom two more times and stayed up as late as we could to be aware of any more "seek shelter" warnings.

When we woke up on Sunday morning, two of the girls in our group decided to head on back to Dallas.  Bonner went with them to the gate so that she could help them open it.  She came back in tears, overwhelmed by what she saw at the gate, and asked us for help because the other two girls couldn't get their car out of the gate.  We didn't really understand what Bonner was saying, but we got our boots on and drove to the gate.  This is what we found.

The tree-line which lined the fence which lined the highway was completely down!  Where there used to be a long line of huge, tall trees...there was nothing!  And the driveway to get out was covered with enormous tree trunks and limbs which we couldn't begin to pull out of the way!

Across the highway (see picture below) was the same!  No trees!

We huddled together and four different people helped us repair the fence, chop the limbs, and drag them out of the way with the four-wheeler and their own trucks and chainsaw.

Amidst all this devastation, there were wild, delicate raspberries, perfectly whole and untainted by this wild event.  A reminder of God's grace and sovereignty, for sure.

Another reminder of God's goodness was this sweet man.  He stopped everything and worked with us for HOURS without a bit of hesitation, no snack breaks, no gloves and no jacket.  He said he had been out all night, looking for people who needed rescue.  He saw us that morning, stopped his truck, and didn't leave until everything was "okay" again.

The other man on the left in this picture below helped as well...he was an odd fellow, wearing a woman's dressy tank top under his jacket, and his name was apparently Waldo.  But we thanked God for Waldo as well.

Even in the midst of this stress and feelings of fear, we had a TON of laughs!  Just look at this amazing crew of HP grads and city girls!  Rocking the flannel, boots and hammers!

So hilarious!

But after laughing until we cried, we turned around and saw things like this!

Entire trees were lifted out of the ground by their roots.  We crossed the highway to check on neighbors living in a mobile home (which was not occupied at the time of the storm, thankfully!) and we saw mangled chickens, clothing, canned goods, toys and tools strewn across 50 yards away from the home.  Their heavy concrete steps and horse trailer were thrown another 50 yards away.  It was unrecognizable.  

Later, we were told that the path of the tornado was exactly where we turned into the driveway of the ranch...the tornado ran right up the highway and completely skipped the ranch.  We didn't even have hail damage on our cars!  We also later found out that the people who live on the land behind the ranch were trapped inside their house.  Why did this happen?  I'll never know.  But I'll always know how protected I felt by His hand.  No other force could have kept us safe that night.  Thank You, Lord, for Your grace and for another day.