Author Archive for: James

Greetings! Last week I was in Chattanooga, TN at BIMI's World Headquarters for their Church Planting Conference that they've asked all of their missionaries to attend. Anna and the crew stayed back in St. Louis, and I went down last Monday. It was a great week. We had several veteran missionaries in to teach on various subjects pertaining to this most noble of actions: planting a local, NT Baptist Church. In the evenings, we had some great services in which God really dealt with us, and it became more a revival week than a school. It was a very profitable 5 days, and well worth the time to attend.

Greetings once again! Much has transpired since the last update. Last Wednesday, a "super cell", meaning, a powerful, fast-moving pocket of thunderstorms, tore through St. Louis, plunging half the city, over 500,000 people, into darkness. We were getting ready to go to church, and I was outside grilling up some steaks, when I spotted the storms coming, pretty fast. I called to Anna to get the kids outside to put their toys away, and within five minutes of their completing that task, the deluge struck. We found out later that the winds were equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane. Suffice to say, it was quite interesting. Our only tree was whipping back and forth like crazy (the kids were quite concerned, so we had prayer for the tree, which was spared incidentally), and I was amazed it was still standing under the pressure. I knew the rain would come any minute, so I drug the grill under the shelter of the garage roof to finish cooking dinner. About the time I decided it was too dangerous to be outside, and that medium would have to be good enough for Anna's steak, the power went out. We finished our dinner in the dark (thankfully, it was complete. Cooking would prove to be a challenge in the near future). About the time we needed to be heading to church, the tornado sirens went off, so instead of going to church, we went down to the basement to wait it out. Everything was fine, but the area was decimated. Trees were down everywhere, and power lines with them, and in the middle of a heat wave (100+ degree weather, and St. Louis' usual 80% humidity). Highway 270 (the circumferential highway around the city) was shut down, because semis had blown over in multiple places. It was total pandemonium. Communciations was affected, with police, fire, and EMS unable to radio each other. Plus, it got dark soon, and there was no light now other than candles and flashlights. Now, I know, this is standard in places like Uganda. There, ironically, because power goes out all the time, the populace is generally much better prepared, either because they never had power to begin with, or because they have the requisite generators and/or battery backup systems in place to begin with. America is not used to such things, so, if you'll pardon the expression, we always get caught with our pants down in an emergency it seems.