No words.

There are no words for what I saw yesterday.

Total devastation.

The entire town is gone.

Gone.

All of it.

I can't explain it.

And I promise you that seeing it on TV is nothing - NOTHING - like seeing it in real life. And even these pictures don't do a good job of showing you what it's like.

There are no words.

There were eight of us from our church that went down. Connie, Jordan, Jordan's boyf and his family, one of our youth ministers and another man. Most of our work was loading and unloading supplies off trucks and then sorting some donated items.

I hope we made a difference. I kind of felt inadequate. Like it wasn't enough.

These people have lost everything and all I can do is load up some cases of water?

Walking through what was once a neighborhood, we wondered how anybody could have made it out of that alive. We wondered what it was like during the storm - the sounds - the power. We wondered what it was like when it was over. What they saw. What they thought.

The homes were just gone.

Some only had a foundation left. That's it.

Just the foundation.

We saw a mattress in a tree. We saw pieces of mobile homes wrapped around trees. We saw trees that had the bark stripped off them. We saw stuffed animals strewn through the neighborhood. Just pieces of things. Everywhere.

We met a lady who was looking through the rubble of what was her brother's home. He was killed. So was his wife. She was just looking for ANYTHING. And found a piece of a cigarette carton that she knew was his. She kept it.

I think Jordan will remember this for a long time too. There was one thing that really got to her. She looked through the windows of what was left of a house and saw what was very obviously a child's room. Painted walls....toys....little shoes....books. She found a little bracelet in that rubble and asked to bring it home. I noticed she had it on last night when she went to bed.

I'm proud of her for going. For wanting to go.

It was a good day. A tough day.

I'm so glad I went.

I'll never forget it.

Ever.

Pray for Smithville, Mississippi.