Hail, hail........the gang's all here!

Yesterday, I got to see  great and awesome compassionate service in action; service I had heard about, and believed, but now actually seen in action.  Yesterday I got to visit my friend Peggy and see the fantastic things that people around her were doing for her because they love her and love her family.

Opportunities to serve are wonderful and I sometimes think that since I have moved a few miles from that area, my opportunities do not come as often as they used to.  And I really miss that.  And I think that it is human nature, in general, to forget those charitable feelings when they are not put into practice.

So I was glad to visit Peggy and see that the acts of kindness going on in her home were alive and well and that people all around us have needs.  I believe that often those needs are put in line with those that need to serve.  This is God's way.

As I visited yesterday, many women had just finished cleaning Peggy's house from top to bottom.  The entire house looked and smelled fresh and clean.  And I know that must have given Peggy some peace of mind in her frustration over seeing the need for it to be cleaned and being unable to do it herself.

Peggy and I sat down for a nice visit and a few hours of time to ourselves before her family descended upon her.  It was Peggy's lunch time and I was helping her with that when a huge storm broke loose! I saw a tree branch fly past the window as I sat down with her and excused myself for a minute to go outside and grab it before that giant branch found itself blowing into the deep end of the pool.  In those few short seconds outside, grabbing and dragging a tree branch around the house, I was drenched and sweaty from the thickness of the very humid air though the actual rain had not yet begun to fall!

A return inside, and a return to Peggy's lunch and suddenly an awful, loud sound filled the house.  Her cat, Lucy, was yowling up a storm in the garage, begging to come inside. Hail began to pummel the house and ground and anything that found itself in its path.  We let in Lucy, swiveled the chair Peggy sat in towards the window, and proceeded to watch the amazing show of nature, a huge hailstorm, an extremely rare occurrance in Arizona.  In fact, later I heard that so much hail in our valley had not been seen in 30 years.

As we watched Peggy's yard turn from green to white, as though a blanket of snow had fallen in our triple digit desert climate, the sound became so loud it was as if the hail were inside the house.

Lucy, now inside, continued to yowl and her cries grew louder and more frantic.  Again we interrupted Peggy's lunch and I went down the hallway and the sound got louder. And there, in the hall bathroom, was a nature show all its own.  For that hail had pounded through Peggy's skylight and broken free and was free-falling into Peggy's newly cleaned bathroom.  In the bathroom now were quarter sized hailstones and a few bits of tree parts, lots of broken skylight pieces and lots of mud.  Apparently the hail and rain falling through a dusty desert picks up a bit of dirt along the way.

Now frantic for what to do, I was able to call for reinforcements and Jeremy, a newly returned missionary, was soon on the task of tarping off the gaping hole in the roof until something more permanent could be done. The sun had come out just long enough for him to do this task, a tender mercy for Peggy, I do believe.  And as new rainstorms came through again that afternoon and evening, the tarp held fast, the bathroom was clean and fresh again, and I was once again offered a glimpse of loving service as many people called to check up on Peggy and make sure her needs were being met that afternoon.  What a blessing to me to be an observer that day.

And in the midst of the rain, with the peeping of the sun, a rainbow.