Sheltered
It was stake conference today, and instead of having two sessions with assignments as to which time, morning or early afternoon, your ward comes, now it's which building as they broadcast from the stake center to the south building which was its own stake center before a boundary division a few years ago. The audiovisual guy is now a member of our ward and serving as executive secretary, and becoming a good friend of ours--the kind of thing where we've known each other by sight a long time, but not close up. All I can say is, we missed out before. He explained that they now use the internet rather than a satellite, but the signal has to go through Salt Lake and then back to the south building; it has about a 30 second delay on that process, and they had a lot of trouble getting this to work well when they did it for the first time six months ago.
Even with two sessions, the buildings are full, and the folding chairs are wretched. Who picks those, anyhow? Fortunately, we had guaranteed seats up on the stand, because we were singing as part of the choir.
One of the men who spoke was from Florida originally. He told of a member who lived on one of the small islands near Naples when Hurricane Wilma hit, in 2005, with the fastest winds ever recorded from a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean. The winds hit 190 miles an hour, and it was the third Category 5 storm that season.
This brother came in to town to help members of the ward get ready. He helped them board up windows, fill and set sandbags, and cut down trees. My heart quailed a little at that--cut down trees? but the speaker went on to say that palm trees in a hurricane are just ammunition. "They're like grapeshot." They must be very shallow-rooted and fast growing. He and his wife had done everything they could and set out to go home and prepare their house--only to find out that the bridge was barricaded and no one was allowed over it. There had already been a mandatory evacuation, and now it was too late. There was not a thing that they could do for their own home. (And this guy grew various kinds of trees.)
Since they figured that their house was going to be a total loss, they stayed on the mainland after the storm abated and helped people clean up. Finally, his wife asked if they could now venture across that bridge and see if there was anything at all that could be salvaged. The island was open again. It must have been hard to steel their courage for what they would find.
Now, I anticipated that the ending of this story was that after the storm was gone, the winds were a memory and the waters receding, that this good couple would return home and find that their own friends and neighbors had boarded up the place for them, and damage was relatively minor. They would give thanks for what they had, and pitch in and make things good again. Wouldn't that be a great story? Didn't their friends and neighbors know what wonderful people they were, wouldn't they pitch in for them? I'm sure that this wasn't their first instance of visible service. I guessed wrong.
When they finally ventured home, their house was standing. No one had boarded up the windows or sandbagged the foundation. It was simply as they had left it, intending to come back and take care of preparing it after they helped those who could not do this for themselves. .The trees were indeed down--flattened in a great circle outward from the house in every direction. There was not a window broken or a room flooded; all their possessions were intact inside the walls. Those trees--my image was of a great circle of protection held all around the house, leaving the fierce storm to pour down and off in its fury.
The theme of his talk was standing in holy places. This was the indelible image in his heart of standing in strength, by making your life holy so that wherever you were, your faith and courage would make that place a holy place. Our Father in Heaven promises to shelter us and provide, and we fall short in our reliance on his promises far more than we should. And sometimes, just sometimes, there are miracles we never expect.
Even with two sessions, the buildings are full, and the folding chairs are wretched. Who picks those, anyhow? Fortunately, we had guaranteed seats up on the stand, because we were singing as part of the choir.
One of the men who spoke was from Florida originally. He told of a member who lived on one of the small islands near Naples when Hurricane Wilma hit, in 2005, with the fastest winds ever recorded from a tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean. The winds hit 190 miles an hour, and it was the third Category 5 storm that season.
This brother came in to town to help members of the ward get ready. He helped them board up windows, fill and set sandbags, and cut down trees. My heart quailed a little at that--cut down trees? but the speaker went on to say that palm trees in a hurricane are just ammunition. "They're like grapeshot." They must be very shallow-rooted and fast growing. He and his wife had done everything they could and set out to go home and prepare their house--only to find out that the bridge was barricaded and no one was allowed over it. There had already been a mandatory evacuation, and now it was too late. There was not a thing that they could do for their own home. (And this guy grew various kinds of trees.)
Since they figured that their house was going to be a total loss, they stayed on the mainland after the storm abated and helped people clean up. Finally, his wife asked if they could now venture across that bridge and see if there was anything at all that could be salvaged. The island was open again. It must have been hard to steel their courage for what they would find.
Now, I anticipated that the ending of this story was that after the storm was gone, the winds were a memory and the waters receding, that this good couple would return home and find that their own friends and neighbors had boarded up the place for them, and damage was relatively minor. They would give thanks for what they had, and pitch in and make things good again. Wouldn't that be a great story? Didn't their friends and neighbors know what wonderful people they were, wouldn't they pitch in for them? I'm sure that this wasn't their first instance of visible service. I guessed wrong.
When they finally ventured home, their house was standing. No one had boarded up the windows or sandbagged the foundation. It was simply as they had left it, intending to come back and take care of preparing it after they helped those who could not do this for themselves. .The trees were indeed down--flattened in a great circle outward from the house in every direction. There was not a window broken or a room flooded; all their possessions were intact inside the walls. Those trees--my image was of a great circle of protection held all around the house, leaving the fierce storm to pour down and off in its fury.
The theme of his talk was standing in holy places. This was the indelible image in his heart of standing in strength, by making your life holy so that wherever you were, your faith and courage would make that place a holy place. Our Father in Heaven promises to shelter us and provide, and we fall short in our reliance on his promises far more than we should. And sometimes, just sometimes, there are miracles we never expect.
Wow! That is an amazing story! A miracle, indeed!
ReplyDeleteWow. Wow.
ReplyDelete