the aftermath

The Sunday the tornado came through, Nathan and I had kept Kacie and Alyssa overnight. I really enjoy keeping people but only having one bathroom does present a problem. :) We had a lot of fun Saturday and Saturday night. Kacie got to our apartment around 2:30 and got to watch me finish baking cinnamon rolls. Then, Saturday we went to testimonies. 

The whole thing got totally over shadowed by the tornado. 

The rest of the week was crazy. My typical day was: go to work for 8.5 hours, spend 2-3 hours at church helping feed work teams or clean up, get home around 8:00 and crash. Wednesday, I took a 5 hour shift at the Crossroads church feeding tornado victims. My house never got cleaned up from Kacie and Alyssa and until Nathan finally did the dishes there were dishes in the sink since last Saturday. 

I spent this past Saturday working on a work team in Washington. It was a wonderful experience. There are no words to describe the amount of debris and pictures just don't capture it.  

The parking lot full of truck, trailers, skid-steers, and other machinery  

Devonshire-Hampton area

standing in someone's kitchen

Oh, and if you ever pick up a paint can that survived a tornado- it may have a leak. 

 I got to toss a lot of bricks, haul a lot of boards, and sort through piles and piles of ruble.  I found a stack of baby pictures, Amber F. found someone's wedding dress still in plastic, and someone found a bunch of tools. But, even with all of those finds, the amount of stuff they lost is incredible. 

It was so cold. Halfway through the morning Wendi brought hot coco out to our work team. It was wonderful. :) After lunch, I went back to church and found some foot warmers. They helped immensely. 

There were so many volunteers. I knew so many people, it made the work a lot of fun. Brook and Corey were there. It was so much fun to be able to work with them.  Troy and Ellie were there too. And, so was Janelle G. who I visited in Haiti.

Lena worked crazy hard this week as the unofficial secretary. 

She looks so cute curled up with Heather's baby. :) tehe

So, tonight I made it out grocery shopping, and began cleaning the apartment. 

All stocked up for the holiday baking to come :)

I can't believe Thanksgiving is this week. 

In Christ

~Michelle

Refuge from the Storm

My back was against the outside wall. I was holding on to Cecily as the lights flickered and then went off. Everyone sat silently in the Sunday school room where I sat as the roar outside grew louder.  I could feel the church shaking and groaning.  There was a loud roaring sound, debris slamming into the church, and I felt like the roof was about to lift off. I positioned myself to fall on top of Cecily if that happened. At that moment I knew I was ready to die but I also knew we would be spared.  The was a peace that seemed to fill the whole church and I knew God would be with us to the end. 

When they announced we would be going back into the Sunday school rooms, I didn't believe them that there really was that much of a threat. But, as we all emerged from church, it was clear that all of us had just witnessed a miracle.  The tornado had been heading straight towards our church, but  instead turned north a fourth of a mile from us.  The church yard was covered in trash and a few cars had broken windows.

My family was all in church on Sunday for Kirk's baptism. The baptisms were moved to Eureka because they had running water even though they didn't have any power. Most of my family went to the baptisms but Nathan and I stayed back.

After all was clear, Nathan went with a couple others into the subdivisions to see if they could help. Here is some of the AMAZING pictures he took. Seriously, Washington looks like a war zone right now. 

Kendra is an ER nurse so she started feeling like she should be in there helping, so I drove her to the fire station where they were setting up a triage area. People were laying on sheets on the concrete floor and there were no pain medications. I saw a man come in covered in blood, shaking, wrapped in nothing but a sheet, a woman laying dazed on the floor, and another woman whose head was bleeding through the bandage on it.
One of the doctors who knew Kendra wrote up a prescription on a piece of cardboard and sent us to OSF to get medication. 

It took forever to get out of town and even longer to get back in. Roads were blocked off, police, ambulances, people leaving, people coming, gawkers, first responders etc. I have never seen anything like it. They routed us, rerouted us, and rerouted us again. Kendra was wearing scrubs by this time and so the police let us into areas where others were unable to go.  
There are no words to describe the destruction and devastation we saw. families standing on piles of rubble that used to be their houses, cars where a house used to be, wood, plastic, insulation covering the streets, people milling around dazed, shocked. 
By the time we made it back to the fire station, most of the injured were being sent to different clinics that were set up around Washington. So, Kendra and I headed back to church.

That night at my parents house, because our power was out in Eureka, Nathan and I opened to Isaiah 25:
1. O Lord, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.
2. For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.
3. Therefore shall the strong people glorify thee, the city of the terrible nations shall fear thee.
4. For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.

God was our protector in the storm, I have no doubt of it.  I pray His name can be glorified through the relief efforts. 

In Christ
~Michelle

Licensed

I am Licensed. Finally. After a month of working without full access to cases, I finally got my clearance. 
Last week my background check cleared and this week everything else came through. 

It's official! :)

 Work has been going really well. I got a really nice ease in because of the time it took to get all of my clearances through. 
I now have all of my clients, I can visit them alone, I'm starting to get a hang of going places, and I've testified at court on my own. 

Visiting my clients is a lot of fun, minus the slightly dangerous side of things. :) There's nothing like being a little white girl walking through a pretty rough neighborhood all alone. The guys are pretty protective though and they always walk me to the door and watch me go to my car. 

Inside the houses is really interesting as well. My first day on visiting a client, a half asleep, half naked teen stumbled across the hall in front of me with his tooth brush hanging out of his mouth. Usually when I go upstairs, all the doors are shut, loud music is playing, and guys are shouting at each other through the walls. 

The other day, I went up there and timidly knocked on my client's door, silently praying he'd be fully clothed.  He shouted from the other side of the door "Who is it?" (in an angry tone, add an expletive or two). Mind you, he's also about 6'5", very big, and not Caucasian. ;)  "It's Michelle, your case worker" I said. His head popped out the door. He grinned. "I'll be down in a minute."

After having a nice conversation with client #1, I went looking for client #2.  I asked guy #1, who is not my client, if he'd seen client #2. Guy #1 asked guy #2 and client #1.  
So, picture this. Little me, standing in the upstairs hallway with three large teenage males, who do not share the same skin tone as me,  when client #2 comes sheepishly out of the bathroom. :) Ahaha. I love my job.

I think they like me though. They all sat around for about 20 minutes answering questions about the fact that I am not Amish, I do not cuss, what it means to be a conservative Christian, and no I do not know what a conservative vice lord is. Needless to say, I now know what a conservative vice lord is (a very violent sect of a Chicago gang), and I'm not sure I'd ever want to run across one in a dark ally. :)

It has amazed me, though it shouldn't, the fearlessness I feel. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" Psalm 27:1
It has amazed me, though it shouldn't, the ease at which I suddenly find myself in spiritual conversations with my clients.  They are so hungry to fill that hole in their lives. 

In Christ
~Michelle

Sing Unto the Lord

Last weekend, the entire Wyss clan descended to record a CD for my Grandparents.
My grandpa has always loved when either his kids or his grand-kids would sing. So, for a surprise this Christmas we recorded a CD.  We had to tell them about it before hand though, because of all the out of town family that was here for the weekend.

Nathan and I kept our first overnight guests- Scott and Joy. They were great guests and we had a lot of fun with them. 

We recorded Friday evening and most of Saturday.

the studio

the cousins recording

trent and kray goofing off

the end of the day... Ned playing violin and men sleeping on the couch.

It was a lot of fun and a really great way to spend time with cousins, singing praises to God. :)  It's been a while since I've sung for any other purpose than church or young group. I got to sing some of the high stuff, eek. :) Which, I thought was great fun, but who knows how it sounded.  :) My voice was definitely shot by the end of Saturday, though. 

We didn't sound very professional, but I think it fulfilled it's purpose. I am constantly reminded of how blessed I am to have grown up in this family.  

In Christ
~Michelle

Code Orange

It was a crazy day at work today.

The morning started out like any other normal work morning.

One of our clients threatened to kill a worker, and we all were warned not to allow him in the building. 

Then, around 10:00 the power turned off. For about an hour and a half we sat in the dark and waited for the power to turn back on. With no computers, no printers, no copiers, or phones we couldn't do any work. 

Then, at around 2:00 we received a Code Orange: "external threat."

Supposedly a few days ago a man kidnapped his wife. She was found dead in her car today and the police traced the guy back to his house. 

Three blocks down from where I work.

They had the house surrounded and expected gun fire. Our building was on lock-down and the police were evacuating nearby houses.

So, again we sat and waited.  And since this was all very exciting and we were totally unmotivated to work by this time, we toured the building trying to find a window we could watch out of.  We never did find a good view but we found out that it's a pretty creepy old building. 

We spent the next two hours on the internet watching for any news updates. 

Finally at 4:15 we received the good news that the police were inside negotiating with the suspect and the area was now safe to leave. 

:) I guess these are normal occurrences when working on the south side.

In Christ

~Michelle

*I don't know why it's doing this white background thing.