aftermath

I went with the Freshman class to Lafayette (Luh-fay-it, in case you don't speak Tennessean) to do outreach. It's about 45 minutes east from Highland. We worked on the Macon County fairgrounds, which is right next to the National Guard Armory.

The damage was very obvious. Lots of houses didn't have roofs or were missing parts of the structure. The trees are snapped off and laying everywhere. I was surprised how many houses had tarps over holes and how much of the wood has been cleaned up though.

This Baptist church didn't really have much damage to the building, but it lost a lot of trees. We turned on the road in front of it to go toward the fairgrounds. Some staff from Madison were out driving around and saw us. They said they had gone to Jackson, TN where ACTS is set up, but weren't able to do much there. They said it was better that we didn't try to go there.

I worked with the Freshman guys mostly, sorting donated food and personal items. They really didn't have any system going, so we just did our best to group things together (soup, fruit, canned dinners, paper towels, shampoo, etc.).

The US, Tennessee (red), and Macon County (white) flags flying across from the armory. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see that the flags are shredded from the high winds. There was a FEMA RV parked outside of the armory. They're just starting to move into the area, even though TEMA has been active since the storms.




Me with the Freshman girls. Only a couple of them worked with us on the food. The rest moved and sorted clothes in another building. They had an emergency animal shelter set up on the grounds too, and brought in about 15 new animals in the time we were there.

In other news, Ryan came to visit for the weekend. He brought me these beautiful roses that I had to go buy a vase for. Luckily, we found them for really cheap and both Jaclyn and I should be able to use the vases at our receptions!