My name is Aloycha de La Roche and I have been studying Discourses for four months. I found MSIA through a friend and peer professional, Kate Hume, in Knoxville Tennessee. She asked if I would send you a small story of a Light miracle coming out of the recent storm named Katrina. So here’s my story:
My eldest daughter Lesa is a nurse anesthetist and a major in the US Air Force. She has lived in Ocean Springs Mississippi for the past eighteen months. She and her husband Danny have a beautiful son, Corey who is the light of my life. He was five years old on August 26. His party was the next day, Saturday the 27th. They celebrated even though they knew Katrina was moving toward the Gulf coast and possibly straight for them. This was their third hurricane in the eighteen months since moving to the coast. The prior two sent shockwaves through them and they packed many of their valuables for their run north. This time, everyone in Biloxi assumed Katrina would be as innocuous as the first two. Lesa and Danny decided not to pack their valuables but they did board up their house and drove north that Saturday night before the official call to evacuate. When the call did come at 6 am on Sunday morning they were already nearing Shreveport Louisiana, where she would wait for the storm to pass.
When she was transferred to Biloxi, Mississippi she had a last minute change of heart when buying a home, opting for a smaller place in a less prestigious neighborhood than the one she was originally considering even though the larger home was in a neighborhood that had never flooded, which was it’s claim to fame. Their small neighborhood of new homes is situated in the middle of a much older neighborhood, one mile north of Interstate 10 and 3 miles east of Casino row in Biloxi.
She called me about 7 pm on Sunday to say Katrina was headed straight for Biloxi. I had just returned to Knoxville from Oklahoma City, where I had been caring for my parents for a week while my sister, who is their caregiver, was out of town. After a fourteen hour drive, I didn’t go home but went straight to Kate’s house, where I knew she was hosting an MSIA seminar. I arrived just as the last person present spoke their thoughts into the Light. I took the candle and told them about Lesa. The four of us placed Lesa, Danny Corey and their house in the Light. All the next day as Katrina roared ashore, I held her house in a dome of Light and never once saw destruction coming there.
On Tuesday we began to see the horrible aftermath of Katrina. The casinos, so close to her home, were now road barriers along I-10. When Katrina hit, the sea surged to above 20 feet, washing inland in many places as far as 6 miles. Lesa lives closer to the beach than that. She could not reach any of her neighbors or anyone on Keesler Air Force base to find out about her students, friends or her house. After seeing the casinos on TV, she called me at 5pm on Tuesday to say she had concluded that she would return to find an empty slab where the house had been. I couldn’t believe this. Her house was protected but she believed the worst. Then at 8pm she called back. She finally reached her neighbor. The response? Her house and most of her neighborhood was completely spared. Not so much as a shingle lost. She did lose a porch light and a section of fence in the back yard. Just 3 blocks away from her house and as far as the eye could see, no houses were left standing.
She drove to Mississippi on Wednesday to check on her house, having heard about the looting all along the coast. She called me that night. Not only had her house been spared but even the meat in the freezer was still frozen solid, despite 90+ temperatures and the total loss of power to the region for several days. She donated the meat to her kind neighbor who was sheltering her own daughter and family, who lost everything in the storm. They almost lost their lives and had to climb to the roof to flee rising water. The neighbor was at her daughter’s house when Katrina hit. They witnessed many bodies in the water. Some of those bodies were from the neighborhood containing the house Lesa originally intended to buy: it was hit by a wall of water 20 feet high. The neighbors had a hot meal for the first time in days. They had had nothing but beef jerky for the previous two days. Lesa also gave the neighbors a five gallon can of gas to run their generator. Gas in Biloxi topped $3.19 a gallon that day, when you could find it, and if you could get to a station.
On her trip down, she didn’t stop to look at any other part of town nor did she drive along the coast, so she didn’t realize the full scope of the destruction. Her commanding officer, however, drove by the house and called her Thursday night. He told her that her house and neighborhood “was in another world” and he could not believe it was spared when everything around her was lost. When I told her that we had placed her in the Light, she knew it was true and that the Light had protected her.
Love and Light to you,
Aloycha
Other articles from MSIAers and their experiences of hurricane Katrina
A Message From MSIA’s Spiritual Director John Morton About Hurricane Katrina.
The Winds of Change and a Baptism of Renewal and Hope.
After the Storm, the Light of Loving Shines Through.
Poems by Children at the Cajundome Shelter for Hurricane Katrina Evacuees.
