And then the rains came...

Let me just say how glad I am that the reunion was not a week later. The very next weekend after the wonderful family reunion, we had 13 inches of rain in 24 hours! Needless to say, our little town was flooded and things got a bit difficult around here.

Many basements were completely flooded, but luckily, ours just had minor leaks. Nothing terribly serious, especially compared to what so many others in town were going through. We have a couple leaks in our foyer ceiling as well, but again, truly not a big deal.

Many, many roads were completely closed and water was over our gravel road in about 5 or 6 different places - and that is just for our 1 mile stretch! 2 of the highways coming into town were closed for periods of time and the dam at the local country club was in danger of failing for awhile. It did hold, however, the back side of the bank slid down the hill and covered the highway, resulting in its closure once again. ATSU and Truman were both hard hit.... ATSU lost 1/7 of the contents of their entire library and Truman’s Pershing Arena was flooded. Neighboring Novinger had to have some boat rescues for residents of homes near the Chariton River.

We lost internet during the storm and just got it restored today. We have even had about 5 more inches of rain in the week since the big storm! So, many of the flooded areas are just flooded again. I cannot remember a summer like this one ever before. Not even the summer of 1993. 

before the tornadoes that passed by.... 

Part of the back of the dam that slid down across the road.

The water had risen above this drainage tube - you can see the logs on top of it. 

The area in this picture was a true raging river. And obviously, it isn’t usually!

In the midst of the storms, life went on. Last week was my week to work for Food 4 Kids. We pass out lunches to anyone who is hungry Monday through Friday. We are based in the 4 city parks and the program runs from just after July 4 until near the end of August. It is designed to fill in the time between the public school summer school and fall school schedule. It is a wonderful program and is clearly filling a great need. We serve around 1300+ lunches per week and growing.

Below were some of my fellow “kitchen crew” that day. We make about 350 sandwiches a day then head out to the parks to hand them out. It is quite an organizational feat! Each park has their own set of coolers/boxes, etc. My park went prepared to feed about 175 people per day.