August 23, 2012

Please Pray!

I'm asking all of you to please, please pray for Polk County Missouri right now. As I write this, there are two active wildfires in the county and they have already burned hundreds of acres. I can see the smoke of one of them from my house. Firefighters from at least two neighboring counties have come in to help, but at this point one of the fires is completely out of control and uncontained, and our area is experiencing very high winds right now, which makes everything worse.
My family and I are out of the fire's path, thankfully, but we have friends whose home and land is directly in line with it, and other friends who are firemen, out there fighting on the front lines right now.
Please pray, first of all, for the safety of everyone involved in this disaster.
Please pray that God would stop the winds and bring the fires under control, and that He would send the rain we so desperately need.
Please pray for the recovery of everyone whose property has been destroyed (to my knowledge, no homes have been destroyed yet, but a lot of pastureland, winter hay, and a few barns have been lost).
Please pray that, whatever happens, the Christians involved in this circumstance would respond in a godly way and use this opportunity to help our neighbors and share Christ's love with them.
Lastly, please pray that we would all keep calm, level heads on our shoulders and take things in stride. We Missourians are used to dealing with tornadoes and hailstorms on a regular basis, but wildfires are a little outside our field of expertise.
Thank you in advance for your prayers. We need them badly right now.

Update, 10 pm:
The main fire has made it into the more rugged area in the northern part of the county and the firefighters are unable to reach it, so they've moved around to get ahead of it and are waiting on one of the roads to try and head it off. Hopefully the road will serve as a firebreak, but with this wind we can't count on that. If the fire continues on this path, the next farm it will reach is one belonging to some very dear friends of my family. Still no homes have been destroyed, thankfully, but over 20 cars have been, and countless bales of hay - a loss that will make this winter very hard for a lot of people.
Please continue praying, especially now that the darkness is making the firefighters' job harder and more dangerous.

2 comments:

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