Yesterday I Tweeted: "9 years ago today we all believed All Is Well With The World! Then 9 years ago tomorrow that all changed forever!" 9/11 happened. And I don't think any of us will ever forget that day. We were living in Louisiana at the time, I had just sent my boys off to elementary school & turned on the Today show & like the rest of the world couldn't believe what I was seeing. All the Church staff met at the Church to be together & to pray. I packed up my 3 year old twin daughters & I remember walking into the Church where they had also hooked up a T.V. to watch the coverage unfold, and my girls saying "Daddy, we were already watching the air plane crash into the towers at home" glad they were really too young to understand what was happening to there safe little world.
These are pictures of Ground Zero in 2008, when my boys & I visited New York City on a summer missions trip with their youth group. It is truly the only quiet place in the entire city.
We met Fire Fighters & people who had actually been there when it happened. A man who was in the financial business until that day, & now worked with a Church in ministering to Muslim people. Even the people who survived that horrific day, their lives have never been the same.
We spent a day in a shelter for homeless families. Above is Kyle speaking to the kids after we had done some drama & songs for them. And below is Zach wowing the kids with some awesome magic card tricks. They loved it all! I spent quite a bit of time talking with a woman & her two beautiful daughters who had just moved into this shelter. She was a career woman who told me about being down town shopping that day and had inhaled so much dust & debris when the towers fell that she could no longer work due to health issues with her lungs. She cried as she talked about it & this was like 7 years after it had happened.
I still pray for those people I met in New York City. And others who've lost loved ones. We all lost something that terrible day. Our Innocence for one thing. And on this, the 9th anniversary, my kids have asked if we can watch the movies The World Trade Center & United 93. Yes, it is with heavy hearts, we remember.
I'm glad that there are parents out there who want their children to remember this day. If we do not remember, then it will be written out of our history texts because it offends the Muslim nation. (Just like Britain and them writing the Holocaust out of their curriculum because it offends the Muslims).
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to see young men on missions trips. My oldest boy has been for two years now with his youth group to various charities and homeless shelters. Thanks for sharing your memories with us.