Not a ton new to report today! The biggest praise is that both rivers are continuing to go down and the Big Ditch is continuing to hold!! Everyone relaxed on the Big Ditch yesterday. The water is still high, but everyone is feeling much better about it. In fact, Des Moines County lifted the mandatory evacuation for everyone south of the Big Ditch yesterday, which says a lot! We're not completely past the danger zone, but it's definitely looking better. I would say it's much more likely to hold rather than break at this point. That's great, because there was one day last week everyone was expecting it to break in a matter of hours!! God has strong hands!
Dad said that the Iowa River is expected to stop flowing into the flooded bottoms by the weekend. woo hoo!! Now they can concentrate more on getting the water out! You can already see in some places where the water has receded, but there's SO much more to go. Once the Mississippi goes down more, it will drain quicker. At some point, the rest of the water will have to pumped out, which will be Dad's job!
Sometime in the next few days, Dad is going to take me on a tour of the levees to see all of the work that's been done with sandbagging and everything. I'm looking forward to that and will be sure to have my camera! He's also going to take all of us on the boat to the house, most likely tomorrow. The water is getting low enough that we might not be able to do this anymore soon. (Now, keep in mind that it's not necessarily because the water itself is low - it's still a good 12-15 feet or so. The reason is that you don't know what's underneath the water, especially what may have floated with the water, and therefore you don't want to run into anything with the boat!). The water has always been up to the roof of the house, so it will be interesting to see what the house looks like now that we may be able to see some windows.
Mom and Dad also have a place to stay, which is another huge answer to prayer! Thanks to some good friends, they're going to stay in a house not too far from our farm, just on the dry side of the Big Ditch. It will be convenient for Dad since it will be between his work and the farm. They'll move in sometime in the coming weeks. (Thanks Christy and the Bell family! :)
I've been hearing that my aerial pictures on Facebook are being passed around quite a bit, which is great! I would like to post them and some more somewhere where people can download or order prints easily. Anyone have any good ideas? I know there's Shutterfly and Flickr, but have never personally used either. I want it to be as easy as just clicking on a link to get to the pictures to make it easy for others to get to. Several people have said they're the best flood pictures they've seen! That's great! I'm glad I was in the spot to be able to document this tragedy.
Thanks for reading! :)
P.S. I just looked at my post and it's fairly long!! Here I said it was going to be a quick update with not much new and I wrote a ton!! Oh well! :)
1 comment:
Stephanie,
Kimmie shared your blog with us and we've also shared with Tom Hayes.
We are both from Iowa. Cal, Sumner (NE Iowa) and Katy a farm near Clinton (eastern Iowa, on the Mississippi). Your pictures have been unbelievable!
We're praying and our prayer partners are praying. It's so encouraging to see God work.
We want you to have peace regarding our China trip. We know your decision will be with God's guidance. We look forward to getting to know you better, if not on the China trip, afterwards. It seems we both have shower curtains with Herkie the Hawk! (Kimmie told us:))May God richly bless you and your family and you feel His arms surrounding you all.
Cal and Katy Milnes
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