Tornado Touchdown

Tim Funk announced before the morning service that a dangerous storm was predicted to hit during the morning service and if it did we would make our way down to the church basement. About 30 minutes into the service we started to hear a rumbling that just kept getting louder, then a few bangs with lots of wind and rain. The sirens didn't go off so the service was finished. As Ken Hoerr stood up to announce he would be stepping down from the pulpit in January we could hear the tornado sirens going off in the distance. During lunch we started to hear reports back from our church family in Washington, IL. They all had to head to the basement as the tornado went overhead, there was lots of noise but no damage to the church. Entire neighborhoods were leveled with this monster. Below are a few pictures.

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So far we haven't heard of any fatalities, just lots and lots of damage. Willis had the afternoon service on baptism . After the service Dale and Melinda Thomas were baptised. Mark and I stayed for the dinner as I was waiting tables. It was a very joyful day for Dale and Melinda and we welcome them into our church family. 

After church is when we started seeing pictures of the damage from the tornado. We have heard this was an F4 but not sure if that has been confirmed. We stopped at Meister's after church to check out damage and saw someone had already been there putting pots, pans and garbage cans where water was dripping through the roof. There was no damage at home although we can tell we had a large amount of rain in a very short period of time. Mark helped move the old round bale feeder out of Valiant's paddock and move in a new round bale. Karin called as we were just finishing up to say they were bringing Tom's English Mastiff stud dog Ricky and would I want to bring Emma out for a date? Emma is in season now and we have been hoping to find a nice AKC registered English Mastiff in the area but haven't been able to find one. Tom's is out of good bloodlines and registered parents but Ricky doesn't have papers. He is a beautiful brindle color with a huge head, a bit taller than Emma and weighs more than her at only 3 years of age. Emma was taken to Farmington to meet her new husband and all went well. He was very respectful and she was soon ready to tie the knot. Hopefully in a couple months we will have a litter of puppies.

Tom and Tara came over with their 8 month old son Heath Michael Meister. This boy looks just about like his daddy did way back when except he is probably cuter. 

He sure was a happy boy. A nice update came in from Vicki the owner of Rohan. Rohan is out of Velvet by Raven. This is what she writes:

Hi Judy.  Sending you a couple pictures of a 3.5 year old Rohan.  What a good boy he is. 

He is an old soul in a young body. 

This boy is gorgeous! Thanks Vicki for sending along the pictures. Have I ever said here how much we love updates and pictures of our stallion's offspring?