Joplin

I'm sure that most everyone has heard about the horrible tornado that devastated Joplin, Missouri, yesterday. Since Missouri is the state that I live in, I emotionally share in the devastation, even though I personally wasn't affected, as Joplin is four hours away from where I live. 

I first heard about the tornado yesterday evening, and at that time 24 deaths had been reported. As time has gone on the death toll has risen, and as of right now it stands at 116. There are tons of people missing, so the death toll is bound to go up, unfortunately.

I don't know if it's in poor taste or not to mention my blessings in light of the Joplin situation, but I want to express my deepest gratitude to the Lord for blessing my family and me so abundantly during this deadly tornado season. There have been so many violent storms in my area, but as bad as they've been, they always seem to pass by without doing too much damage. I hope and pray that this trend continues.

St. John's Hospital in Joplin. It's reported that all of the windows were blown out of the building. It was sobering to see close-up shots of the windows on the news, and since I'm quite the hospital veteran myself, I can't help but wonder what it would've been like to be one of the patients in the hospital while the tornado was raging.

The red, mangled piece of metal is one of the hospital's helicopters.

Horrible devastation. When I see something like this I always wonder how/where you start to pick up the pieces.