A Week in Review

It's hard to imagine what all has happened this past week. Please excuse my personal reflection and brain dump.

Sunday evening I saw tweets from a friend in Joplin saying he safely made it home and how horrible the weather was. I soon learned an F5 tornado ripped through the town destroying about 1/3 of the city. My friend, Steev Inge, pastors Mystery Church and he'd just been to St. Louis the week before for a training we hosted.

Monday I had my normal meeting with my boss and asked what we were doing for Joplin. One of my many responsibilities includes administrating and organizing the midwest region of Acts 29, a church planting network with over 400 churches around the world. I soon found myself organizing the midwest regions' relief effort. Immediately I'm thinking through ways to mobilize our region and whole network to get Steev help and support.

Tuesday my grandpa had major surgery. Through an amazing turn of events, they found an anuerysm in is abdominal artery. If it would have ruptured, it would have killed him. I drove up for the surgery late Monday night and was at the hospital early Tuesday morning. I'd never seen my grandpa so upset and nervous. We walked into the prep room and he just started crying. My big, strong grandpa reduced to tears, scared of what might happened. The nurse walked in and gave him a sedative to calm him down. (Note to self: if you get upset tell them you don't feel so well, they give you the good stuff.) My mom, grandma and uncle spent the next three hours waiting. I spent the majority of the time on the phone and email coordinating Joplin relief. Grandpa's surgery went VERY well. They were able to put a stint in and were out an hour earlier than expected; however it to much longer than expected to get him to ICU. Hours later we were in the ICU; he was awake and hungry.

Wednesday we went back to the hospital after spending the night at grandma's. They were getting ready to move him to his normal room. He wanted to walk and they let him. He ended up walking the entire way. The doctor happened to walk by him and stopped when he saw my mom and asked if that was Ray. She said yes and then with is mouth open said, he shouldn't be able to do that! He got settled into his room and ordered lunch (nothing seems to keep his appetitate away). I ended up leaving around 2 or so and stopped at the house to work a little more. That's when I saw the weather St. Louis was having and decided it was better to stay put awhile. My grandparent's have a weather radio and it kept going off, ironically when I was on the phone working on getting relief for Mystery Church in Joplin. At one point I thought I heard sirens so I went outside to see; my grandparents live in the country where you shouldn't have such warning systems. Sure enough they were going off so I moved my car into the garage (literally just got my car back from previous hail damage) and headed to the basement. Around that time I heard my family (minus grandpa) walk in the door. We made a quick sandwich for dinner and went back to the basement. Luckily nothing really happened and I was able to get back to St. Louis late that night.

Thursday was an early, early morning meeting with our Belleville campus leaders followed by more coordination with Joplin. The day ended so very well with birthday celebrations for myself and two of my friends. Last year we started the tradition of having dinner and cake at one of our friends houses. I'm very excited this has become a tradition. I spent the evening over good food, great conversation and even better friends.

Yesterday started a little later, but was another full day of work. Ending at the same friends house celebrating their oldest graduating high school!

And, now, it's Saturday. I'm sitting in my room wondering where the week went. It's been here and gone like a flash.

I'm hoping to wrap some planning up today and take Sunday and Monday off. Next week will be exciting as I leave for Joplin Thursday. I'll stay a day and go to Kansas City for the Mumford and Sons concert Friday night. Hopefully go back to Joplin on Saturday with a group of my friends and meet with some regional churches on Sunday.

Over the next couple of months, I'll be spending a lot of time in Joplin. I'm praying for strength and perseverance for myself, but more for the people of Mystery Church. They are tired and exhausted; a handful have lost everything. I pray God will use me to bring refreshment and encouragement into their lives. God use this devastation to show us your grace and restoration that you are bringing all things new.

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