Touched by the Flood

I sent this email to friends and family one year ago this weekend. I share it with you today in honor of a city on the mend...





This is a difficult email to write. I am in the throws of trying to put together a sermon where people so badly need to hear the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have members of our congregation who have been evacuated from their homes and others who have personal businesses under water and in jeopardy.

As many of you may know, I am also in the Big Brothers program. My 'little brother' Marcus' house is entirely underwater. I received one of the saddest phone calls in my life 6 AM Thursday morning from Marcus' grandmother and caretaker, Dorothy, who fighting through tears, told me she thought they would lose everything. Dorothy runs a daycare out of her home to pay the bills. Now she doesn't know how she will sustain life. When I talked to her, she was exhausted from staying up all night watching the waters overtake her house. Dorothy and her family are unchurched. I assured her she will not go through this alone! I promised her I would ask my internship congregation to help her clean-up in the weeks ahead.
She took a deep breath and said, 'Really?!' I could hear a glimmer of hope in her voice. 'That would be wonderful.'

Our house is on a hill about 3 blocks from the edge of the flood water. The flood water laps at the bottom of the hill. Yesterday, I walked down to the National Guard solders who are guarding the water-blocked road to thank them for their service. I told them I was a chaplain and that I'm praying for them. One of the soldiers reached out to shake my hand and wearly said, 'Thank you.' He told me he was from Davenport and had been in Cedar Rapids working 36 hours straight. Many other fire and police officers have worked countless hours in boats pulling flood victims and their pets from their homes and saving their lives. Our pastor and her husband spent yesterday visiting with people at a makeshift shelter at Prairie Schools, where my wife teaches, visiting with displaced victims.

Katie and I have been without power for five days. We are fortunate our house isn't a total loss like some of our neighbors, but we live close enough to them that the power company told us it would be a calculated risk to turn our power back on. We were told it could be a week or two before power is restored. We have Kirk's milk on ice in a cooler. We lost everything in our fridge, which will cost us a few hundred dollars to replace. I took some of our frozen foods to the church freezer and some to a friend's house in Fairfax (about 2 miles from Cedar Rapids).

In addition, the entire city is operating with just one water well (about 25% of the needed capacity to run the town), so we are asked to limit water use to drinking only. That means no showers, little toliet flushing, and no laundry or dish cleaning. Our friends in Fairfax have opened their home to us for all our day-to-day needs and we are thankful to God for that.

At this time, I would ask you all to pray for the people in Iowa City and other places down river. Pray that they would take serious the gravity of the situation coming and they would take precautions including evacuating their homes when told to by emergency workers and city officials.

God bless,
-Craig