We Got Home Last Night

Thank you so much for all the emails and the comments letting us know you are praying for us. This has been a very difficult time for my parents, sister and myself. I'm so thankful I have God's grace to see me through these times.

My parents are holding up remarkably well although they are not the type to show emotion in front of others. My sister and I had the harder time because we show our emotions. My sister has taken the bulk of everything on herself contacting those that needed to be contacted and getting things taken care of. I stood in amazement at how God was helping her to have the wisdom of what to do. Yesterday we saw things come about that it was taking so long to happen. God had people that knew my brother who knew someone that had the answers of who to contact and such about a funeral home and about contacting the medical examiner and not the crime lab about releasing my brother's body when we were told to contact the crime lab. His body was released yesterday and is going through the final processes today.

Seeing my brother's house was VERY difficult. I was numb at first but after about 10 minutes of just standing there and praying....I broke. I began to cry uncontrollably just from the overwhelming emotions that were welling up inside of me. My nephew came and embraced me and hugged me tight and kept saying it's okay. He is 18 and blew me away at his compassion for an aunt he barely knows. We inventoried what was in my brothers shed and determined who wanted to keep what to take home. We went back yesterday to pick our things that we were getting to bring home. I lost it again when we went to leave. It was a difficult thing to say "good-bye" in a sense. Just knowing my brother lived there and was killed there was very upsetting.

My sister and my parents hope to be able to leave Mississippi tomorrow to head home. Today is a day of meeting with the lawyer and making more phone calls. Everything else can be done from their homes by phone calls. Please pray for them as they travel back home and also in the coming days as this is still going to be hard to fathom and get past.

Please continue to pray for all of us. I'm sure this is going to be hard to get over. But I know the Lord can certainly help us to do that. We have a busy week here at our house which will help me to not think about it all. We are having a youth conference at our church that is running tonight through Wednesday night. You can listen to the service on the internet beginning at 7:30 PM or so by going here and clicking on the "Live Webcasting" box.

I will post last week's puzzle results hopefully later today. I haven't had time to deal with that yet. Thank you to those that participated. Check back to see how you did.