My brother-in-law, Aaron, complained that I didn't have RSS for this blog. I had no idea you could do such a thing, so I think I enabled it now. I thought I'd post some follow up on the tornado adventure, as well.

Windsor is getting put back together at an amazing pace. The Mormon yellow shirts have been huge, on Sunday we had over 600 volunteers wearing yellow "Mormon Helping Hands" t-shirts (including Jordan and me). We had an early, short sacrament meeting in our jeans, and then straight to work. It was very impressive, and hard to miss all that yellow in the "zone". The entire scene of the disaster has changed for the better in just a few days. Crews of 10 each went door to door doing everything they could, removing debris, helping people move what was left out, doing heavy lifting.

One of my well-to-do friends who has two houses right now (he's selling one) offered one non-member family to move into his house. We did the move for them. This house is just huge, 7000 sq ft, pool, movie theater, and fully furnished -- brand new carpet and paint to help it sell. Offered it up to this family for as long as they need it. I think he's crazy, but he's a saint.

The church response has been amazing. The organization and the ability to pull together this many people, in teams, with supplies, is just mind-boggling. Many of the local companies are donating things directly to the Bishop. Lowe's, for instance, asked us what we needed -- total blank check, said they'd give us anything in the store. We asked "can we get a generator?" They gave us three - 5 KVA generators. We gave them a list of things we thought we'd need, they had that and more on a truck to us within hours. Chainsaw? They gave us 15 chain-saws. And they did this all directly to the church, because I think they really knew how this stuff would be used, and well. The National Guardsman mentioned, "you guys can get in anywhere with those yellow shirts." We had no problem moving about. No questions asked. The police, etc., were stopping everyone else.

600 of us. I can't tell you how impressed I was at our turnout. There were lots of volunteers from other organizations, etc., but nothing like this.

Julie stopped by one non-members house that had been damaged, parents of one of Lacey's friends at school, and asked if there was anything we could do. They said, "thanks, but your people have already been through here, cleaned up the whole cul-de-sac." It's also interesting to note that a few years ago these same people sort of stopped letting Lacey play so much with their daughter (they used to be best friends) because they learned we were Mormon.

I'm telling you, the organization of the Church alone is reason enough to at least consider that it might be divinely inspired. There's nothing else like it. It works in every imaginable case, from teaching the gospel, to providing disaster relief. It's just amazing. And it goes for the most part unheralded. The local preacher was giving a huge sermon on Sunday, talking about coming together and healing (yada yada yada) as a community, in front of cameras and news people, all the while others were out doing. The contrast was telling. The first counselor in the stake presidency had a chain saw and was piling downed trees onto his flat-bed trailer. Our Bishop was running what looked like the Normandy invasion out of his living room, with coolers and food available for all who passed through his house.

Anyway, tons of good stories out of this. This kind of thing is what kids remember years from now. It's been a great experience for all of us, and not having any power for a few days really brought us together (plus we wont have to go camping for a long while!)

I made a video documentary style of the incident with commentary from all the kids as to their own experiences. It turned out well. Maybe I'll post it on you-tube.