Friday, April 15th Princess and I were cooking lunch in our home (the church's mission house). The other two kids were at their Friday Enrichment school for homeschoolers. I knew the rain was coming so I'd gone to Kroger earlier that morning to get it out of the way. All of a sudden around 10:30am tornado sirens started going off. I thought this was weird since the sky had just started turning black. I immediately turned on our t.v. to listen to our weather men. I saw that bad weather was indeed on its way and that it was about 20 minutes away. I didn't get too panicked. We have severe weather quite a lot but as far as I know we've never had a tornado. I don't get nervous during tornado sirens. I've even been known to NOT wake my kids up during a siren because the weather man pretty much has the path of the tornado or storm right there on screen for all to see. But for some reason, this was different. I was nervous. I didn't know why. And yes, the weatherman did have the path laid out for us...and he was right. It was headed straight for Clinton. Mind you, there was no tornado yet. But David Hartman said he didn't like the look of the clouds that he saw on the weather camera. The first set of sirens stopped. And then about 15 minutes later they went off again. Then stopped. There was a very eerie quiet that came. David said there wasn't indication of an actual tornado on the ground but that he was worried about the clouds still. I'm sitting there watching the skycam on t.v. look out over my city and I see pops of light flashing on the ground all over. I learned later that those were our transformers. I hear David say, "there is a tornado down on the ground in Clinton", and then all went dark. The power went off. I heard a very loud boom (the power substation behind our house). And then, yes, you guessed it...I heard that dreaded train.
Now, we live within throwing distance of the railroad tracks and my first thought was why was a train coming through here during this horrible weather. Then I remembered that a tornado was supposed to sound like a train so... dummy me...I tried to open my front door to look out and see whether it was a train or not. Not the brightest decision, I know. But I couldn't get the door open. The wind was too strong. It sounded horrible, like the train was on top of us (much louder than the trains we hear daily on our tracks). Princess was crying and I was freaking out. I called Jeremy to see if he could get any info on the internet (he was at work in Vicksburg, about 45 minutes away). He told me to go to the church's day care center across the street. I told him it was too late for that. Then all was quiet. The wind stopped, the rain stopped, there was no sound. It was eerie.
I got off the phone with Jeremy without either of us realizing what had just happened. I texted the kids' teacher to see if they were ok. I texted my mom. Then the sirens started. This time it wasn't tornado sirens. It was ambulance, police, fire, and rescue sirens. It was constant and it was all around us. Princess and I were scared but I was worried about Tink and Prince. The cell services were down, no power, no internet. I was walking out the door to go check on the kids when I miraculously received a text from their teacher saying that they were all ok. That was the last text I would receive for over 3 hours. Fearing what was outside, Princess and I stayed put and decided not to get in the way.
I didn't realize the devastation until we left 1 hour later. And even then we didn't see the true devastation until we walked around our block the next day. There was chaos everywhere and we had to go the back ways to get to the kids. But my only concern was getting us all back together. Still no cell service, still no communication with the outside world. We made it back home and started realizing what had just happened.
Mom called and she was already over half way here from Picayune (2 1/2 hours away). She told us what she knew and helped spread the word that we were ok. With no power we were still clueless as to what had occurred.
So here is what happened: an F3 tornado put down on one side of Clinton and traveled in a line to the other side of our city. In its path was our church's day care center (across the street from where we live) and Eastside elementary housing over 800 kids. The tornado miraculously jumped over our church and the elementary school. Many many homes were destroyed but by the grace of God NO ONE WAS KILLED! Storm catchers caught our tornado as it crossed I-20.
(scroll to the bottom of the blog and push pause on the music in order to hear the videos)
Here is what God taught me. HE IS IN CONTROL! He is all-powerful! He will protect us! He is our strength! That tornado literally came right over our house. Yet the first thing Jeremy said when I finally got him 4 hours later was, "I knew you'd be ok. I knew we wouldn't get out of going to Africa that easy!" haha! We are following Him and are so very excited about it. People try to scare us or try to make us think we are insane. But we have the peace of the Lord that surpasses all understanding. Honestly, our hearts ache for our new home. The Lord's will will be accomplished ultimately and we are just as safe in Africa as we are in Clinton, MS. We refuse to allow fear to control our lives because we have faith in our Lord who is stronger than any tornado that might come our way!
Jill
