FIRE!

My heart is breaking for all of our friends and our church family in Spokane. There are three wildfires

that have merged and are now burning in the city. As most of you know, we lived in Spokane for almost 30 years, moving back to Omaha to take care of Dennis's Mom who had Alzheimer's. We will always consider Spokane home though, and our friends there are like family, since we had no family living close.

This is a photo of the house we had built in 2002 with our sweet Chloe standing in the front. We loved this house and planned to retire there. We sold in it 2020. Well, this house is now in the "Get Ready to Evacuate" zone. Many of our friends have had to evacuate because the fire has either already burned their homes or is heading toward them. That's the "Get Out Now" Level 3 zone. Our old house is in Level 2. 

It would be so sad to go out there next month and see this house gone. It's already going to be tough seeing all of the damage.

Flames burning near a friend of ours home. They still don't know if their home is okay or not.

This is the perspective from the Gonzaga University campus. Terrifying. This photo is fairly close the to first home we lived in when we moved to Spokane.

According to the officials, this is the number one priority fire in the nation today, although there are hundreds of fires burning around the country. There are more fires in Washington and Oregon than anywhere else in the country. They have not had a drop of rain in Spokane during the entire month of July.  We know over 700 homes have burned and most likely many more.

Please pray for everyone in the path of the fires. Although we got used to having wildfires around us every year when we lived there, I never, ever thought one would be inside of the town and literally burning much of the northwest part of the city to the ground and it's still spreading. The fire began in Riverside State Park on Saturday morning and spread very quickly.

Please Pray For Spokane!

Blessings and love,

Betsy