Storm

Monday, April 3, 2006

It was an amazing storm.

It had been half an hour since youth had begun – Jimmy, Judah, OLeif, Collette, Joe, Magnus, Ben-Hur, Wallace, Susie, Rose, Bob B., and Molly – they had been singing in the youth building and as they wrapped up prayer at four, thunder rumbled and some clouds had tumbled in visibly, through the windows. And yet it wasn’t until 4:30 that they hurried out to tack down some things before the rain came through.

Any intentions of resuming a Biblical discussion seemed to have been forgotten as soon as they set foot outside. The winds had kicked up and looking around to the great expanse of sky over the church and the silos, the skies had darkened intensely. Lightening shimmered a few times way off, and it seemed as though the church was centered in a great black front, moving towards them rapidly. The youth scattered about doing this and that, and eventually they all gathered near the larger of the two silos looking down over the great fields with the pine tree nursery to the north. Rose shimmied up a small tree to watch the action and they all watched and waited and Collette knew for herself that she stood in amazement at the power. There was rarely anything that impressed her more than a good storm. God’s power – the slightest movement of His robes would stir the heavens – and this was only a small thing, but something Collette loved.

And as they watched for awhile, it seemed to Collette as though the sky had suddenly turned green, and Jimmy tried to rally everyone back to the youth building.

“That’s hail,” Joe warned, suddenly becoming more serious.

He ran off to park the car under the awning of the church building, squealing tires as he did so. By that time Jimmy had easily convinced the crowd that it was high time to be leaving the open air, and they followed, watching the sky.

It was right then, just as they had mostly arrived at the door, that Collette looked up and saw directly above them, over the church steeple, a swirling of the clouds. They seemed to be spinning in contorted circles. Then she heard the wind, and she knew what they said about the wind sounding like a freight train. And just as she thought it, she saw the trees – the great old tall trees near the nursery, and they began to roll. And then it hit.

Never before had she felt such a wind; it nearly picked her up. They ran into the building; Collette felt herself thrown in and nearly collided with one or two of them. As she turned around to see everyone else pile in, she saw a large construction sign torn from its stakes and catapult across Highway N over a fence into a yard across the way. The wind gusted with incredible force, and they were all finally piled in.

“OWWWW!” Wallace cried, rocking forward. “Ow!”

He had just been hit on the neck with a hailstone.

“Jim, Jim,” Judah said, trying to remain calm, as the kids scattered from window to window. “We should probably head over to the office. It’s not safe here.”

Several others openly agreed.

“I think it may be too late,” Jimmy said, trying to look out the window against the hail.

“If we’re gonna go we’d better go now,” Judah said several times amid the chaos.

Jimmy hardly had time to think twice. The door was flung open to a deafening roar and the entire group flew across the parking lot. Collette knew that Ben-Hur ran track, but she had never seen anyone run so fast. But Joe hit the door to the office first, followed by Ben-Hur, Wallace, Collette, and the rest of the gang who had one by one bailed out into the fury. Only OLeif managed to jog instead of fly, as he was not terribly inclined to be excited over foul weather.

And just as they made it to the office, a woman and her little son came in after them, from off the road. She worked at the Flower Stop in Cottleville and had seen them run like madmen across the parking lot. She pulled off just in time before the hail really began to fall. And there they stayed hurrahing the weather, or worrying over the conditions, until the tornado sirens kicked up as the most dangerous part of the storm came into view – the end of the front. And so they whiled away the next hour, retrieving the sign from the neighbors yard, chatting about the excitement and other things such as the idea of designing a SimChurch, collecting sticks from the pavement, looking for damage, took some drinks from the cooler, checked the radar on Ivy’s computer, a tornado had hit in St. Peters, and some roofs had been torn off in O’Fallon, and they were all nicely half-soaked…

Collette wondered if she would ever see anything like it again and decided that it was all a completely brilliant experience.