Hurricane Patricia

On Friday, October 23, Hurricane Patricia hit Mexico, as most of you will already know.

When we began hearing about it and as we followed the news of it's pending arrival to the west coast, the feeling was that it would cause large scale damage and based on other hurricanes, death of some of those in the direct path or because of the ocean surge and flooding. This hurricane was breaking records and who knew what it would all do.

Guadalajara is 4 hours inland, so we knew that we were safe here but that we would experience rains and wind. The forecast was for several days of this weather, so many weekend events were cancelled and parents were given the option Friday morning to take their kids home from school if they wanted to avoid driving in the expected heavy rains in the afternoon once the hurricane hit the coast. Several parents at our kids school have lived through hurricanes before and many wanted their kids at home with them as they waited for news.

The hurricane hit the coast, damaging the area it hit, which is more sparsely populated. Even though it is sparsely populated though, people's houses, homes, stores, and crops were ruined, and this cannot be downplayed. There is a ton of clean-up and rebuilding that will need to happen. When the hurricane hit the Sierra Madre mountains, though, it slowed down a lot, preventing the large scale damage that was expected.

What is amazing is that the official death count is 0 (although I did read a news report that stated that 6 people died, due to falling trees and a car accident further inland).

As people have been talking here in Guadalajara about the aftermath of the hurricane, people are thanking God for calming the storm. The power of the storm shows the great power of God, and also the calming of this same storm shows the great power of God. 

There is also a general sense from those we've talked to that the country really did a good job at evacuating the thousands of people on the coast, at warning them and helping them get out, providing shelters, etc. The country came together on something important.

These pictures are all from the coast, taken from various news articles. Continue to pray for the people of Mexico, especially those who lost homes and livelihoods.

Here in Gdl, we had a sunny day yesterday, and we are thankful that the storm passed over.