We are Pray's Mill...We will Prevail.....

Wow....what a week it has been....and through it all God has been faithful.

We went through some major changes in our church this past weekend and we were all sad...heartbroken...fearful...and ready. Ready to dig in and prosper as a body. We as a church have been through some tough times in the past three years. I have been broken...beseeching the Father...bewildered....and bathed in love from the people. We have definitely had our ups and downs. As I sat there on Sunday night.....I couldn't help but want to get up and holler at the top of my lungs "We are Pray's Mill..WE will prevail". I thought of the speech that Nikki Giovanni gave at a campus convocation following the Virginia Tech shootings. By NO means do I think what we have been through as a church can even compare to the things that those students went through on the campus of Virginia Tech. I just loved what she said....and I will continue to tell our church....We will prevail....We are Pray's Mill!!
Read the words of the speech below....it'll move you!

We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.
We are the Hokies.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We will prevail.
We are Virginia Tech.

As I read over those words, I remember the prayer I had on Sunday night....that God would use our church. That He would be honored by our deeds...our hearts...our thoughts. That we would be a lighthouse to our community....and that we would prevail. And boy, did He ever bless us!

This week has been a tragic week in our community. We had torrential downpours on Sunday night leading to severe flooding. Much of our community was under water...immobolized...without power. Lives were lost....7 total in our county alone and the majority of them were in a five mile radius of our church. On Monday my husband was up at our church gym where a makeshift shelter had been put together for the families of missing loved ones. Our gym was somewhere for them to go and get dry...to get food...to wait for news. A family had been there all afternoon waiting on news of their lost loved one....a young mom. Several members of our church body were there to minister to the family when they learned the devastating news that she was gone....they loved on that family....prayed with them...shared with them.

Over the next 2 days our church was used as a water distribution center for those in need.....we handed out thousands of gallons of water to people in need. Our members were out in full force to labor....to love...to laugh....to be a light. What an awesome ministry opportunity it was....one I will never forget as long as I live! We had joined together....a band of brother's and sister's....for one purpose!

As I was handing out bottles of water yesterday alongside church members....high school wrestlers...boy and girl scouts.....prisoners.....friends........I got welled up inside and couldn't get over how God had blessed us amidst the storm. Not just the literal storm that had taken place outside...but the one inside our church body....and I could just imagine that He used this whole thing to tell us this......You are Pray's Mill...You will prevail!!