Last Updated on August 26, 2017
During a brief break from helping cover the weekend’s downpour, I was browsing Facebook and spotted images of a familiar church flooded.
Several months after I moved to Charleston in 2006, I decided it was time to find a permanent church.
I made a list of possible contenders as I drove around the neighborhood, jotting down the name of any church that looked as if it might be a good fit for me. Then I went home and visited websites, read about what those churches did and didn’t believe and how they conducted services, and made a short list of churches I wanted to visit.
The first one on the list turned out to be the only one I visited. From the first service I attended, I began to think I’d found a church home.
Fast forward about eight years or so.
Hurricane Joaquin, which had spun itself into a Category Four storm, was avoiding land. But on land, somewhere over southeast Georgia, a low pressure system was doing some spinning of its own as it stalled in place, and moisture churned up over the Atlantic by Joaquin got suctioned into South Carolina, causing what was being described as a 1,000 year rain.
The church property is bordered by a retaining pond. And the neighborhood closest to the church in that part of Charleston recorded slightly more than 24 inches of rain over the course of a couple of days.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to imagine a parking lot of such a property flooding. But it was worse than that.
There was concern about water creeping its way towards the doors. But it was worse than that.
Some of the staff showed up on Saturday and moved some things inside in case a little water actually made its way inside.
But it was a lot worse than that.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Here, from the church’s Facebook page, is what they found on Sunday:
On the side of the doors closest to you is about three feet of water inside the building. On the other side of the door, somewhere under all that water, is a parking lot.
But all is not lost at the church, particularly not the spirit of enthusiasm about what is to come.
More on that to come.
