Now since I have a few minutes of peace and quiet, I will try to backtrack from the storm. We moved our last few boxes into the house Mon. the 15th, just in time for us to prepare for Hurricane Isabel's arrival. That night I had to go out to a local church to speak. I was so tired from moving and tired (as I told them) of talking about homelessness. I was only wanting to talk about the hurricane. We talked for a few minutes about everyone's preperations and then came the shock "I find Hurricane Isabel a blessing. I pray for the changes that will soon be coming. With everyone running around in a panic of where will they sleep, do they have enough to eat, what about water, no electricity? Well, now Williamsburg gets to feel some of what the homeless think about every day!" "Wow, how did you turn around a potential disaster and bring about the issue of homelessness?" somebody asked. "I didn't. God did." Remember God states in the Bible if you turn away the poor and needy and shun them then He will show you what it is like to be poor and needy. No, I didn't want anyone to be hurt or lose their house, but the mental fear of the storm was enough for attitudes to change.

We had already advised people among the street and weekly motels we were opening up our house for a shelter during the storm and by Tuesday had 12 people wanting to come in for a few days. Tuesday and Wednesday I ran around to a few churches that donated $500.00 for food and supplies and to motels that had donated blankets. We were swimming in a sea of boxes, but Robert and Geoff cleared rooms for people to be able to sleep. Thursday morning I was receiving calls from even up in Hampton to see if we could help. I had already had over 60 calls for people to come stay. By noon, the winds started picking up and the rain starting hitting. I went out to the weekly motels to check on and pick up those who had called in to come over. Most of them decided not to come because this hurricane wasn't so bad. I tried to explain this wasn't the hurrican, but they didn't feel any threat from the weather. So I made my way around to the different motels. One couple, who I have never met, but were homeless wanted to come. Geoff ran by to get them so I could go on. I stopped at a motel that doesn't have homeless, but they help me out in times of rooms for people so I went to see if everything was fine. They were full, but since the power was off, and they didn't have a generator, nobody had a way to eat. So since I needed to change into fresh dry clothes, I also packed up some bread, peanut buter and jelly, fresh tea, water and chips and headed back out. After running back to the hotel, I made my way down into the woods to search out people. Unfortunately, the rain was too hard and trees were coming down too fast to make it through. I had no choice but to turn around. I headed down to the mobile home parks on the edge of Williamsburg. Most of the people had left town.