wow what a week.
first of all i just want to say thank you, thank you to everyone who reached out to make sure i was okay and thank you for all of the prayers. my squad and i felt so wrapped in love and support and we couldn’t be more thankful to tell you that every single one of us are alive and safe! september 27th for sure is a day that we will never forget but for now let’s start at the very beginning of our week in north carolina…
day 1:
monday morning we packed up everything we needed for the week into our backpacks and loaded up the vans to head to black mountain, north carolina, our home for stateside ministry to round out our training. we were living in cabins with beds and warm showers and could not be more excited to have a mattress and roofs over our heads after a long few weeks living in a tent! such a blessing. the first night was filled with hours of sand volleyball in the pouring rain and it was so much fun.
day 2:
tuesday we started our ministry! my group went to excel college to help with landscaping, pulling weeds, moving rocks, blowing leaves, and rebuilding storm drains.
the first half of the day was clear skies, the second half was a completely different story. the rain was so hard that houses started to flood and my team and i dug trenches to redirect water and built barriers with rocks and mud to stop the water that was coming down the hill into the back door of a home. our clothes were soaked but we were just thankful to be in the right place at the right time, able to help. in the evening, we came back to excel college for dinner and pickleball with the students and ended with a late night gas station run!
day 3:
day two of ministry was spent in the garden of black mountain home for children! we tore up old flower beds and tomato vines and weeded. we had the most beautiful view of mountains and the rain held off for most of the day. we picked apples and flowers and it was the sweetest day!
day 4:
day three of ministry was also spent at black mountain home for children organizing their craft room and sorting through the donations at their thrift store. we ended the night with hotdogs, a survivor marathon, and a dance party.
after a fruitful but exhausting few weeks of training camp, this was exactly the week i needed.
day 5:
friday, i’ve struggled to write this part of the blog for almost a week now but the ways that the lord protected us are too good to keep in.
that morning we were woken up at 8am by a knock on the door telling us that we needed to head up the road to the dining hall of the campus we were living on with just a few belongings for the day because of concern for branches that had fallen in the storm the night before. what we didn’t know then was that that one decision saved our lives because our cabins would soon be destroyed by a landslide.
we sat in the dining hall eating breakfast together and watching the rain grow a little bit stronger and stronger all around us. a few of us were standing by the back door when the water started to come into the building so we walked back into another room, again seeing the lord’s hand of protection over us because of the moments that followed. at 9:08 am my friends and i were laying on the ground together, talking & laughing. at 9:10 am, one of my squad mates who was sitting in the windowsill began to scream at us to run! not even seconds later the walls began to collapse and windows shatter as we ran out as fast as we could, not even having time to grab our bags or shoes. the sound of the collapse still vividly plays in my mind. we ran through multiple feet of mud looking back to see that half of the building we were inside of was completely crushed by a landslide. we ran to the concrete pad where our vans were parked. we were completely surrounded by flooding and rushing mud with nowhere to go for two hours as wind blew and trees cracked around us, rain pouring, waiting and praying for safety, hysterically crying, worshipping, screaming, shaking in the cold, no shoes on our feet, calling our parents to tell them that we loved them. thirty six of us. every. single. one. of us alive! it was not by luck that not one of us had been in the bathroom or still standing by the door watching the rain.
search and rescue were never able to get to us but thankfully three men who worked for the children’s home made it to us, working hard to get us to safety. one of them was a survival specialist who found a rope and tied each end of it stretching across the river of flooding and debris. we held onto the rope and crossed two by two until we all had made it to the other side where a bus was waiting for us to drive us just up the road to the gym of the children’s home where they brought us blankets, food, water, dry clothes, and shelter. an adventures in missions disaster relief team was on their way to us to help us find a safe way home. they tried 8 different ways to get to us, on the 9th time the women’s prison that was next to the children’s home had their gates wide open. they were able to drive straight through to us. WOW. thank you god! we were so thankful to see them, so many of us in shock and still feeling restless and unsafe.
as we were settling in for the night at the children’s home, we were told that we were being relocated again because of gas lines nearby and chances of being flooded in. we were driven down the road in groups of 5 to trucks of men staying at a hotel that had offered to drive us to the conference room of a holiday inn to sleep on the floor that night. we hardly slept between flashbacks from that morning and sleeping with the lights on all night long because of the generators. people were so kind. the bathroom was flooded and we were told not to go in without shoes. when we told strangers that we didn’t have shoes, they didn’t hesitate to take them right off of their feet for us to use. when we fell asleep that night, what we didn’t know was that one of our squad mates dad and his friend had left their home in tennessee driving two church vans to us so that we would be able to make it safely back to base in gainesville georgia. a three hour drive took them eight hours because of all of the destruction from the hurricane but because of their kindness and selflessness, we were able to make it home in less than 36 hours after the landslide. within that time, we had so many people covering us in prayer and raising over 30,000 dollars to replace everything that we lost. clothes, toiletries, bedding, passports, phones, shoes. we are so grateful for everyone’s generosity.
the lord’s faithfulness and provision was so evident even throughout some of the scariest moments of my life. in the weeks leading up to that day at training, he had shown our squad five rainbows! he is so good.
please pray for us as we continue process and grieve. i am feeling shaken and sad but having a community around me has been such a blessing. we have become more unified than ever. i am so in awe of the lord and i am so thankful that everyone is safe. please pray for peace and rest and strength. pray that we wouldn’t live in the “what if” and that we would rejoice in how the lord saved. pray that we would be able to feel the fullness of our emotions but that they wouldn’t define us going forward. pray for us as we leave for guatemala in less than a week.
i feel so loved and am so thankful for the community i have supporting me.
i love you, lily
