Great Balls of Fire

2003-6-27 05:51:00

My Friends, We just returned home late this evening so I am just going to take a few moments to make a few comments.

Again, we had a great gathering. About half the group were new faces and they were all a pleasure to get to know. Then too it was very sweet to see the returning members again, many who now seem like old friends.

Many thanks, especially to Mindy and Melva for their hard work in putting everything together and making sure that everything proceeded well. If you give these two a job to do you can rest assured that it is in good hands.

The girls also gave a great presentation on the Seven Rays. We indeed have much great teaching talent in the group that we can draw from. I was very proud of them.

Then I surprised Susan by calling on her to give a brief history of Nauvoo. She performed like an expert of history.

In addition we had quite a bit of sharing from the group and got to know each other well. Another highlight was Rick explaining his invention to us.

I see some of you are already sharing some of your feelings and thoughts of the gathering. This is great. I'm sure though that those who did not attend want to hear from more of you.

We had an odd experience on the way home. On Tuesday evening after leaving Nauvoo we arrived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We noticed gathering storms so we turned on the radio and heard something like this.

"A tornado has just completely destroyed the town of Manchester and several other nearby towns are experiencing 70 mile an hour winds, thunderstorms, hail the size of golf balls and torrents of rain. Warning! A storm is approaching Sioux Falls within fifteen minutes that may develop into a tornado. This is a life or death situation. FIND SHELTER NOW!!! I have seen nothing like this since I have lived here. This storm is coming from several directions at once and it is difficult to predict what will happen."

After hearing this we were quite perplexed. Artie wanted to find a motel room for shelter, but I told her that a motel may not be much protection from a tornado. I suggested that we follow our original plan and head west toward Rapid City and get ahead of the storm. She was nervous about this but we headed out anyway hoping to outrun the storm. We kept listening to the radio as we entered the highway heading west.

The announcer then said his station was going on emergency power and then named several towns in the direction we were headed that also had storm warnings. He said storms seemed to be developing from numerous locations. Then he kept repeating "find shelter now! This is a life or death situation!"

We were then faced with a decision to head into the storm going west or go back to Sioux Falls and face a possible tornado. I had the feeling to forge ahead and go west, but Artie insisted we go back to Sioux Falls and find some shelter. I reluctantly turned around and headed back to the city. After taking an exit we seemed to wind up in some industrial area that took us about twenty minutes to get out of. Shortly after this the announcer said that the tornado danger for the city would be about another hour. We finally decided the best thing to do was park the car off road under a concrete overpass and wait it out.

As we waited we watched the sky light up again and again with spectacular lightening from the thunderstorm. The radio gave reports of flooding in parts of the city, but fortunately no tornado materialized.

After the worst seemed to be over I insisted that we again head west and we took off a second time. On the way out of town we encountered two large semis blown off the road as well as some cars. For about the next three hours we drove through wind and rain and thunderstorms. Every few minutes lightening would light up the whole sky. This continued to be the case for the next two hundred miles. I had never seen a thunderstorm last so long and cover such a distance. It almost seemed as if fire from the sky was following us wherever we went. It made me think to myself that maybe we did too good of a job in calling down the spiritual fire, that it was manifesting on a physical level.

Anyway about four in the morning we finally pulled into Rapid City and spent a peaceful time the next day seeing Mount Rushmore. Thank goodness the rest of the journey home was quite normal.

In order to find the edge, you must risk going over the edge. --Dennis Dugan