~Testimony Tuesday~

When I found out that we were moving to Indiana, I knew that I was REALLY going to have to lean on the Lord, and REALLY learn how to trust Him...

I do love it here, but some things were happening that I did not quit understand... And I wondered what the Lord was trying to teach me in all of it..

Two months after we moved here, some kids (teenagers) wrapped and egged our house, they also wrote horrible things on our driveway and ON OUR HOUSE... Without going into the whole story, they thought someone else lived at our house, and were taking their frustrations out on it... They got the wrong house... But, the Lord kept us safe... And, the people never came back...

Then, in April I woke one morning to the bed shaking... My body was moving side-to-side like when you are being wheeled into surgery.. I said: "Lord?" Because, I thought maybe He was coming back... But, then I went and checked on Drake and he was still here, so I figured the rapture had not occurred..(hee hee) We found out right after that, that there had been an earthquake...!!! HELLO! But, the Lord kept us..

Then at the end of May, and into June we had horrible storms... Parts of Indiana were flooding so bad... I have never heard wind, like I have heard it here.. I have never seen storms, like I have seen them here.. The news would tell us about tornadoes, and to get into our basements... One time a tornado was heading on a path toward our town... I called a friend of mine from Texas and she prayed, she spoke and told the tornado to go no further and it changed directions.. (I do not remember the date of that, but I am sure you can find it in some weather archive for the Indianapolis area..) The Lord kept us...

Then, late, late June 3rd and in the early morning hours of June 4th we had three storms come through.. I slept on the couch because I wanted to be prepared for anything... I prayed that night, and asked the Lord to please surround us with His warring and ministering angels, and I plead the blood of Jesus over us and our house... I woke up each time a storm would come through... When the third one came through, it was loud, and I turned on the Weather Channel and they said that it got here later than they had said it would on an earlier forecast.. I figured, I would stay up until it past. Then BOOM/CRACK, I heard the loudest sound I had ever heard. Two of my neighbors said that their teenagers woke up, and one of them can sleep through ANYTHING...

I smelled smoke right after that, and thought maybe lightning had hit one of our trees.. I tried to see but could not.. Then, I went upstairs and Steve and Drake were both awake... I could smell smoke in our bedroom too. I was shaking, and picked up Drake to go get him dressed. Steve got upset with me, because he thought I was over reacting and getting Drake upset... He wanted to do some investigating first.. Everything within me was telling me that we needed to get moving... We went downstairs and went into the laundry room and saw smoke rising... I think I got Drake dressed then, we were both shaking, and scared... Steve went down in the basement and I walked toward the front door with Drake in my arms and was praying.. I prayed for His wisdom and protection.. As, I walked to the front door, I smelled gas...

Steve came up from the basement with a very serious look on his face... He said, "Grab whatever you need, because we have to get out of here." I said, "I AM NOT GRABBING ANYTHING, I WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE!" He did not tell me what was going on, he just got us out of there.

He opened the garage, and pulled the car out, and we got in. It was still storming really bad. He went inside and grabbed some things and came back out to the car and pulled away from the house, but to where we could still see it... He called 911 and said: " I think our house was struck by lightning and went into the whole ordeal...

He was telling me what happened.. He said that when he went down into the basement to check it out, he opened one of our storage room closets and flipped on the lights... Then, he heard a hissing sound and looked up.. He said the ceiling of our basement was on fire and the gas line had a hole in it... He got the fire out and that is when he walked upstairs and got us out...

We later found out all the details.. Lightning struck our house and hit the gas-line in two places and then caught out house on fire... We had several people working on our house the next day and no one could figure out why our house did not blow up!!! I knew why...

We had this one particular guy that was there ALL DAY, poor thing... We found out that he was a Christian, and that he was leaving in two weeks to go on a missions trip... I thought it was neat that the Lord placed a Christian in our house that we got to fellowship with the whole day... And, his name was Joel... I love what words mean, so I looked up the meaning of Joel's name. It means: "The Lord is God." Amen to that!!

The Lord kept us again... People may think that I don't doubt, but I still get afraid, and do doubt.. Trust is a big issue for me... Maybe that is why I want to do Testimony Tuesday, to remind myself, that He is faithful, and I can trust Him... Even in the storms and trials...

I would love to hear your testimonies!

I hope you have a blessed day!

May you increase to thousands upon thousands and may you and your descendants posses the gates of your enemies!