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Watching and Waiting With Apprehension and Prayers

My wife and I are watching the impending disaster as it creeps ever closer to the shores of our home state. We are apprehensive about our family and friends who live in and around the New Orleans area and who are preparing for the worst.

One of my friends from high school just evacuated his family at 4pm this afternoon. They left Covington, LA to head back toward our hometown DeRidder, LA (which is in the southwest part of the state and out of the way of the storm). The westbound traffic on I-10 between New Orleans and DeRidder is crawling along very slowly. In some spots it is taking about an hour to go ten miles.

My mother and father went to eat at Wendy’s with friends after the evening service at FBC DeRidder. They saw evacuees all over town. The hotels are full, and others are just wandering around with no place to go. My parents and their friends ran into a family of evacuees in line at Wendy’s. They were traveling through town with no place to go, so my parents’s dinner partners invited the family to stay with them at their house.

As we watch the coverage on the television and as the stories of the evacuees come trickling in, Susan and I are heavy-hearted tonight. We know that tomorrow morning may witness one of the most fearful disasters we have ever seen.

The million persons who are fleeing will likely not be able to go back home for at least a week or more after the storm is over. And when they get back, it is not at all clear that anything will be there. My high school friend who was leaving did not know if his home or his job would withstand the storm. They literally stand to lose everything before the day is out, and there’s nothing to do about it except run.

Our hearts and our prayers are in Louisiana tonight.

3 Comments

  • RosieBoo

    Keep us posted on any updates you receive. We’re all praying and watching the coverage here and it’s ominous. Makes me really feel grateful for that Rainbow Covenant…

  • Russell D. Moore

    And the same goes for my hometown of Biloxi. I still haven’t heard from my parents or my brother. But I saw the windows being blown out of the hospital where I was born (Gulfport Memorial) on Fox News Channel. This is quite a tragedy.

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