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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday October 27, 2003 Volume V Number 49 |
Generally, I avoid the use of the exclamation point when I write LeaderFOCUS. It comes from the conviction that the "!" is a lazy substitute for words that should carry their own emphasis. The right word should be its own exclamation - pack its own power punch. Words have the ability to do that, when chosen well. The exclamation point can devalue the potency of a single word all by itself.
For example, you might write, Terrible! But it's even more striking simply to say, Devastating.
Which is what the firestorm has been. So for today - I break my own rule - Firestorm!
It was a quiet, hot, long night in our town. We expected temperatures approaching one hundred degrees today. All the reports predicted it. We looked forward to an extra hour's sleep. But the pre-dawn glow coming over those ridges in the distance signaled a devastation of far greater consequence than we could have imagined at the time. You've been watching the horrifying images on your television screen.
The raging fires in our area cut into my writing time. There are so many stories... so much I want to tell you.
My inspiration for LeaderFOCUS came earlier in the week from our married daughter snatching up her little boy under the smoke and ashes raining on their neighborhood outside the house from the Rancho Cucamonga fire. "They are talking evacuation, Dad," she told me. I could hear our grandson in the background, a touch of fear on both their voices. "I'm loading up the car right now," she said. And I imagined her going through the hallway of her new home, and the cherished treasures in those rooms and on those walls, and choosing between which to take and which to leave behind. It's the stuff of "Values" courses and discussion groups, but for our daughter, a fearsome necessity.
I expected to write about that, and get you thinking about your values, and then in the afternoon, we went through the same exercise at our house. Everything in me says, "Write." But the hours are gone, the power is out... and it'll have to wait.
I've been keeping our congregation current, as much as possible, on the web site. It's been an eventful day. Our church was spared. Miraculously. But not everyone in our town can say the same. Here's what I wrote this afternoon.
SUNDAY 11:15 AM “The church buildings are OK,” Gerry (our Worship Pastor) said over the cell phone while standing on the lawn in front of the education building, “but it was really close.”
Fire surrounded the church facility as it raced up the hill above the Valley Center Middle School. The brush on all four sides, according to Gerry, the only person on the site at the time, went up in flames. Juniper trees and chaparral, dry and parched, were consumed in a matter of seconds.
Gerry had a garden hose, but said later he said never really felt threatened. He felt God's peace and protection in spite of the flames.
Just a few minutes earlier, the families who gathered at the church for shelter realized that the fire moved in the direction of the church property. They left. Gerry, watching the progression from near the VC Fire Station, turned back in an attempt to protect the church property.
He found a garden hose and turned it on.
Just as the flames leapt high from the brush at the corner of the Education Building housing the Pre-School, several fire-fighters arrived. The flames contacted the corner of the building, but were turned back by the crew. Just in time.
Gerry was able to capture some of the drama with a digital camera. Here are some of the photographs.
Several homes near the church property caught fire.
It’s not over yet, but it appears as though Ridgeview Church, in nothing short of a miracle, was protected from sure and complete destruction. We will continue to pray for the families of Valley Center, and the many other communities in Southern California who are battling these terrible out of control fires consuming acre after acre, and many homes.
I'll be writing more next week. On this Monday morning, as a leader, look around you. Think about the things right there in you room... things you treasure, people you treasure.
And be thankful.
NOTE: Links may not work this week. For Feedback - Click Here
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2003
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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