Home » News & Culture

Please Pray – California Wildfire

Written by: Geoff Baggett June 12th, 2008 4 Comments

I would appreciate the prayers of all of our readers.

I just got off the phone with my daughter, Laura Beth, who is serving this summer with the Sierra Butte Baptist Association in Northern California. She just snapped this picture with her telephone (see right).  She has been staying in a town called Paradise for the past week. A wildfire erupted near her location about 36 hours ago. Yesterday it appeared that the fire was going northwest of Paradise. But the fire crossed a nearby highway and is now headed directly toward the city. Several houses on the southern side of the town are already on fire.  Over 6,000 acres have already burned and the fire is less than 10% contained. Laura Beth just informed me that their evacuation has been ordered. She and her team members have quickly gathered their belongings and joined the steady stream of traffic northward toward a town called Magalia. We hope to find out in the next couple of hours where she will be housed tonight and in the coming days.

Please pray for Laura Beth. She seems pretty stressed out by this turn of events … we don’t have stuff like that back in Kentucky. Also pray for her team, her supervisors, and the people of Butte County, California. You can check her blog for updates.

Similarly Tagged Posts:

4 Comments »

  • 1
    M. Steve Heartsill said:

    Of course, she (and of course, you and mama) will be in our prayers!

    Please keep us updated.

  • 2
    Geoff Baggett (author) said:

    Thanks, Steve.

    We’re still waiting to hear from her. Pins and needles around here, man. Suddenly, theology, SBC, etc… don’t mean a whole lot anymore. :)

  • 3
    M. Steve Heartsill said:

    Issues with our children do that to us.

    The only thing that matters now is God’s love for her (and you).

    He’ll see you through.

  • 4
    Geoff Baggett (author) said:

    Steve,

    She’s fine. The winds actually shifted south yesterday evening, away from their location. But most of the town where they are located is abandoned. That’s the weird part. This team of four students is at a “dorm” house, without transportation, in a ghost town. Thank goodness they will be going north to work VBS in a church this morning. And, hopefully, they’ve gained some ground on the fire overnight.

    But, she is safe. God is good. It’s just different when it’s your kid … and not yourself … in the dangerous situations.

    Thanks for checking back in and keeping up with things.

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

Comment Preview