Christmas Tornadoes

The day after Christmas a storm with 10 tornadoes hit the Dallas area.  While we live in a tornado area, they usually hit in more rural areas.  The fact that it happened the day after Christmas and in suburbia made the impact really big and the whole thing pretty tragic.

Due to the timing, a lot of people were out of town so it was days before some families even knew their homes had been damaged, it probably saved a lot of lives though.

In my calling in Public Affairs that launched me into a very busy week and a half.  Seriously the days are a blur as I worked to help the church use it's relationships to respond to the needs.  And of course because of the holiday, the person who is in charge of maintaining relationships with the VOAD was out of town as well so it threw me into dealing with people I've never met.  I didn't know who I could trust, who I should align with etc.  It was very stressful.

I do have to take a moment and share an amazing part of this story.  6 weeks prior to the tornadoes and even months leading up to that I had a very strong feeling that we needed some training in our Coordinating Council on how to respond in a disaster.  We had some folks coming in from out of town and I attempted to do a training meeting.  The attendance wasn't as great as I would have hoped but the training was spot on, and it helped me to be introduced to those in the NASW who I would need to work with to coordinate help.  And the training I offered was accurate and timely.  I truly felt inspired and led.

I also had THE WORST and MOST DIFFICULT experience ever in the history of my time in Public Affairs.  The president of the VOAD who was running the refugee service center didn't like the way a certain group was handling the distribution of the donations.  So she approached me and "The Church" and asked for an amazing amount of donations and our members responded in a BIG BIG way, like an impressive way, probably too well.  Because once we had all the donations in the center there was a power struggle between the City of Garland who owned the building, and the VOAD members who all wanted to be in charge of the distribution of our donations.  It, was. awful.

But at the height of my indecision and uncertainty of what to do the Lord answered my prayer and in the process I preserved the most important relationship I could possibly make.