Originally published on the Wakonda Blog on July 31, 2024: https://www.wakonda.org/blog
At 6:00am, Monday morning, not twenty-four hours after Summer Camp duties were officially over, I and a team of Camp Wakonda staff set out for Gillette, Wyoming to help set up for the Believe the Promise Pathfinder International Camporee. It was a pretty uneventful drive for the first several hours. However, a little over halfway through South Dakota, near Murdo, we saw a storm on the horizon. We thought our route would take us past the storm. We were wrong. Seth Baines’ truck sustained serious damage. Anna Foll was riding with him, and I’ve asked both of them to share their experience.
When I am asking a question or commenting, I’ll indicate with a “Z” for Zack, when Anna is responding I’ll indicate with an “A,” and when Seth is responding I’ll indicate with an “S.”
Z: What kind of weather did you experience?
S: There was hail between golf ball and tennis ball size.
A: It was extremely loud, and the hail was bouncing four to five feet up off the ground.
S: The whole freeway was covered with hail. It looked like snow.
Z: You saw a biker on the way. What went through your head when you saw her?
S: The storm came in pretty quick. The visibility was getting bad, and I’d seen the motorcycle’s panic lights on, so I’m like “ok, we’ve got to pick her up, because when this thing picks up, she’s going to get pelted.” As we were coming up on her, it was already hailing.
A: She had welts on her arms though, from the hail.
S: We pulled around and pulled her into the car and we just sat there, because at that point the storm was full on and it was getting bad.
A: It was really loud. I asked her, “do you mind if we pray?” And she was fine with it.
S: So we all prayed about it. She was actually from Minnesota, so she was basically a neighbor (to us from Wisconsin).
A: She was an EMT, first responder.
Z: Looking back, why do you think that happened?
A: It could have been a freak accident, but I think it was good that we were there. After it happened, the biker kept thanking us. “You saved my life,” she said. It was good that Seth saw her and that we were able to help her.
Z: What kind of damage happened to your truck?
S: Broken windshield. Dents all along the passenger side. Chipped paint.
A: The passenger side mirror’s broken. The windshield wiper’s broken. The radio antenna just snapped off.
S: We literally just watched the windshield wipers fly off. The piece of hail that hit the mirror was pretty large and it just shattered it. The housing for the blinkers is just gone.
A: Thankfully the windows held up and didn’t break through. We thought it was going to for a while.
Z: Yeah, I saw several windshields that were gone after the storm.
S: We prayed that the windows wouldn’t break. Because the hail was hitting the passenger side window so hard.
A: The biker was holding my pillow against the window.
S: I told her to do that because, if that broke, we would have had nothing between us and the hail.
A: But…it didn’t break, which is actually a miracle.
Z: Do you think there is a spiritual application in this story?
A: Sometimes I think things happen and we wonder why they happened, we don’t see it at the time, but in hindsight we’re able to see that…we can learn things from it and maybe it’s not what we wanted but maybe it’s something that we are able to learn from. God says that in this world we are going to have trouble, but He has overcome the world. He’s with us, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have trouble.
S: I feel like the Devil tried to beat us down. But the interaction that we were able to have with the biker just defeated everything that Satan was trying to set in place.
A: It was a good witness. Good deeds don’t come without resistance. We’re trying to come here to Gillette and be helpful and there was quite a lot of resistance for us coming here. But we made it and we’re alive, and I’m glad the tornado didn’t come. Because that would have been extremely scary.
S: Oh yeah, after the storm, on our way to meet up with the rest of the caravan, we stopped at a gas station and we got to talk to two other people who didn’t get the hail, but they got the tornado. It ripped the window out of their back seat, and they had kids in the back. When we met them, they were taping cardboard over their open window.
Z: So there were tornadoes that actually touched down? Things could have actually been worse?
A: Definitely, it could have been worse.
Z: Do you have any words for those traveling to the camporee next week?
A: Pray. Trust in God. And we’re looking forward to seeing you guys. Camporee is always a really great experience, really a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and everybody should come at least once.
S: And bring duct tape! It fixes everything.
Truly God’s eyes are on our Summer Camp staff and our Pathfinders as they travel to this event! I pray that, wherever you are coming from, God would protect you the way He protected us. And even if you do face trials during your travels, may God give you courage in the time of the storm. He may have a plan to use you to help someone in need, just like He used Anna and Seth.