A Time to Look Forward too

No doubt that across our great country today people will almost feel compelled to mention the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center or else be thought un-American. Rather than talk about the horror of the day - and indeed, it was horrific, I'm going to focus on some good that has come from it.

The picture above is from a previous post in my blog of Baker's Chapel. Baker's Chapel was a tiny church, almost 170 years old that was destroyed in the tornado we had last November.

If you were to drive through town in the last week you would see signs everywhere that said "Welcome Volunteers" or "Welcome New York City Firefighters." That's who hung out in our town last week.

Volunteers from the New York Says Thank You Foundation, which was organized in 2003, as a way of repaying the outpouring of generosity New Yorkers experienced in the September 11th aftermath were here. Their mission is to send volunteers from New York City each year on the 9/11 anniversary to help rebuild communities around the country affected by disasters.

These volunteers consisting of not only firefighters, but grateful residents have traveled to California to help survivors of wildfires, to Louisiana and Mississippi to help with the clean-up of Katrina and to Illinois after a tornado.

It seems that everywhere the New York group goes, there are people along helping them from an area that has been helped by them. There were people here working from every one of the previous disaster areas that had been helped by this group so no doubt next September there will be people from Indiana helping other victims of a disaster.

So they have come to our little town to help with re-building this church. And re-build they did. There were tents set up to feed the many volunteers, places opened to house them and a great start on rebuilding the church was made over just a few days.

And the spirit of Ameica that makes this country so great lives on....and nothing is going to change that.