Five for Friday...Carolina Style

Well, it's been a crazy week to say the least!  If you turn on your tv or look at any social media than you know that my poor state has been through it and back again over the last 6 days.  The rain started last Friday and came in record amounts.  They are actually calling it the 1,000 year flood.  We have been out of school all week as flood and devastation has ravaged our state and we are slowly bouncing back.  So this Five for Friday is all about what happens when South Carolinians get hit and I mean hard!

This is what our radar looked like for 3 days in a row.

 These were the estimates that our cute meteorologist Ben Tanner shared with us day in and day out.

This picture kept getting shared with the news that we got enough water in 3 days to fill a 20oz water bottle for every person on earth every day for 179 years.  WHAT!?!?

It was a lot of freakin rain!

Even though I had knee surgery last Thursday, I got cleared to put weight on it Tuesday and today I went out and coordinated a water station!  YIPPEE!  Our National Guard & Richland County Sheriffs Department have helped volunteers man water distribution sites all over South Carolina.

It really felt good to get out and do something!

Many of our schools in our hardest hit areas opened up their gymnasiums as shelters.  

As shelters opened, those of us not directly hit began pouring in with donations that in many cases have started to get turned away because people have opened their hearts in such huge ways that there is an overabundance of STUFF!  This is a good problem to have as we have gone in and gathered things to share in other ministries to people in need!

South Carolinians' care about each other.  We've been through a lot in the last year but we stand strong!

 Our nationally known Riverbanks Zoo opened up with free admission to all local county residents Thursday and Friday.  I grabbed the neighbor kids and put word out on social media to my school and away we went to enjoy a beautiful day at the zoo!

On a side note...this crew makes my heart happy.  We have lived next door to these sweet kiddos for 8 years and they are the only reason we don't move!  Good neighbors are hard to find and my punks have grown up with these punks.  It's a good thing!

I have to be honest.  I have struggled a bit with our laser beam focus and overabundance of giving to the numerous flood victims across SC.  Not that they don't need help.  I am all for that but when I work so closely with our huge homeless population and see their need day in and day out it's tough to see people give so freely to people who are struggling for a moment in time but be so stingy on a daily basis to people who have nothing.  All. the. time.

We set up tents, line up the food and start making plates.  Our crowd was small today because we had another torrential downpour this morning.  Homeless people will generally stay put in a rain storm so as not to drench themselves.  On a regular day we serve about 150.  Today we served about 50 but they all got seconds and thirds and a smile and kind word so it was well worth it!

Find some way you can help your fellow man!  It makes life richer!

Hop back over to Doodlebugs Teaching and see what the rest of the teaching world is up to!