Urgent Prayer Request

I just received news from my friend (and author who has ministered to so many of us) Elyse Fitzpatrick along with a request for prayer: she and her family are smack in the middle of the Santa Ana fire zone. Lives and homes are at stake. Please pray for Elyse, and pray that God will use this disaster to bring many to himself. Here is a portion of her note:

Although our home remains safe, the number of homes in our communities that have burned is staggering. God has been gracious in preventing significant loss of life; for that we are very grateful. We are not aware of anyone from our church losing a home yet, although we aren’t sure about that, since so many people have been evacuated and many of the reports from specific neighborhoods is sketchy. There are a number of injuries among the firefighters, two have been placed in a medically induced coma because their burns are so bad. Please pray for them. Please pray for the firefighters in general. A tent city has been set up at Kit Carson Park (near our house), where these exhausted, dehydrated workers can get some rest. Please pray that God will sustain them and grant them grace. Please pray that God will cause this weather pattern to die down. The wind is the primary mover of these fires and until the Lord causes it to cease, they will continue. The humidity has fallen to 4% (and in some areas is 0%), so all of the vegetation simply explodes when an ember lands on it. The air is unbreatheable because it is filled with smoke and ash. It looks like falling snow, but it is hot and the chemicals burn your mouth and lungs. Everything tastes like charcoal. Everyone has been warned to stay inside as much as possible. If you go outside you have to wear a mask. The inside my house smells like a camp fire. All businesses (aside from necessary life support and some grocery stores and gas stations) are closed. All schools are closed in all San Diego county even in areas unaffected by the fires because of the air quality. The sun looks like an orange ball in a dark brown sky. (Sorry, that’s not very poetic, but it’s the best I can muster right now!) Please pray for the health of those who have to be outside and for children, the elderly and the infirm who are more effected by the air quality. Our local gas and electric (SDGE) has issued a warning that because it’s lost so much of the grid (including transformers and high voltage power lines) it’s possible that the whole thing will go down today. Please pray that it does not. If it does, then we won’t be able to get information about evacuations very easily, although we do have a transistor radio. We have been asked to turn off everything that we can turn off. This is particularly difficult because we’ve been advised to run our a/c to filter the air. You can see our dilemma. Here’s two humorous items to lighten this missive: Matt Lauer interviewed the Governator: “So, Governor, aside from a shift in the weather, what do you need?” Arnold’s response, “A shift in the weather.” Yep, that’s him. Our ruler. One of my darlings, Hayden (6 years old), wanted to know where we would go if we had to “evaporate.” Hmmm. Good question.