Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Hurricane? What?

Family and Friends,
Hello from the beautiful country of Spain. And by beautiful I mean wind-bashed, wet and reeling. I am posting this as I am certain that you have either read or heard about the storms that have been battering Eastern Europe, and more specifically Northern Spain and Southern France. I just wanted to write a quick post letting everyone know that everyone here is fine - we survived the ridiculously strong winds and crazy weather. We didn't know much about what was happening yesterday until this morning when I read the news and it turns out that we were in the middle of what they are calling a Level 2 Hurricane... There were winds of 99 mph and people began boarding up their windows and pulling in their clothing off the lines. The roof on our apartment building was damaged, and the roof on the apartment building where Sarah and Audrey are staying was completely broken. A brick was tossed by the wind through the glass covering on the courtyard. Sarah and Audrey watched the glass fall from the safety of their apartment with their host family. We watched as people struggled to walk from place to place and Sarah and audrey reported things flying past their window. Throughout some of yesterday we actually were doing errands through out it all, and we walked down to the church and could see the whitecaps on the water from there. There was a lot of damage to this area, and if you look up on CNN about the 4 boys who were killed by a stadium collapse, that stadium is in the town right next to ours. We are extremely grateful for God's protection over us - we didn't realize how dangerous it actually was because we don't get the newspaper, and we don't watch the news here b/c we are so busy. Maybe we should start! :-)
There are over 1.2 million homes in France without power at this moment, and much of the coast of Spain was battered by the high winds and water. In Barcelona, and in my town there is a lot of damage to buildings and the roads are continuing to be cleared of the fallen trees and trash from houses (tile roofing, rain gutters etc.)
So thank you so much for all of your continued support, love and prayers.

There will be more updates on here soon!

Blessings - Team Spain

3 comments:

Mary Lou Sherer said...

We're sooo thankful for God's protection over you during the hurricane. God is good! We'll be anxiously awaiting more updates...
blessings to you!

Anonymous said...

We echo Mary Lou's sentiments completely! How grateful we are to know you made it through safely. We had know idea before or during the storm that we should have been praying extra for your protection! Good thing none of it surprised God, and that He is all-sufficient!

Laurie M said...

I was in such a bubble on Saturday that I didn't even hear about the weather until someone at church on Sunday morning asked whether the team was okay...and I said, "What?!?" Another echo--so glad that everything is okay, and that you can be there and help as much as you can.