I Almost Lost My Home Church To The Flood

On this blog I have spoken very fondly of a small church in a rundown neighborhood in Kelso, Washington, that I once attended. The Kelso Church of God of Prophecy was my church home from 1999-2002, and changed my life for the better even though I didn’t realize it at the time.

As I revisited my hometown of Longview during my most recent trip home, I called up the number to the church and arranged a time where I could visit with my former pastor and his wife. My visit there just would not be complete without seeing Pat and Patty Dillon, two of my spiritual mentors in my later teenage years.

The Dillons are tremendous people who have been leading the church forward for 13 years. By forward, I mean they have taken the church from an aging shell in massive disrepair and a non-existent congregation to a building with a beautiful interior that sees a good amount of people walk through its doors each time they open to the public.

And mind you, the seating arrangement in this church consists of five rows of pews, two rows across. Official capacity is somewhere around 70, if that.

The last time I had seen Pat and Patty was the COGOP State Convention in Kennewick back in August 2007, so the visit was long overdue. Couple that with the fact I hadn’t even stepped foot in that building on Kelso’s South Walnut Street since 2004 and I knew I had to go back.

Time has a way of changing things, and in this instance, for the better. Many of the building projects my family had wanted to help the church out with before moving to Missouri in 2005 were complete…the church’s interior had benefited from a great overhaul. The stage was complete with a piano, organ, even guitar stands and amplifiers. For a church that had been steeped in tradition, simply seeing guitar stands there was, for me, a major sign the church was beginning to break from the chains that held it back for so long.

The back classrooms had been renovated, new sheetrock hung from the walls and even a new kitchen had been made. Most of the construction is from the efforts of Pat and Patty — you could see why I said they had been moving the church forward.

As I took the wonderful sight of the renovated building in, Pat began to share with me how they almost lost the building in the massive January flood this year. I shared with him that I recalled vividly receiving numerous emails and phone calls telling me to pray for my “home church” as I termed it — the Coweeman River in Kelso was inches from cresting and breaking the dike merely a half-mile from the church.

We sat down on the front pew of the sanctuary and I listened as they began to tell the story of how the church weathered a natural disaster.

To set the scene, many parts of Washington and Oregon saw snowfall in late December that dwarfed previous records. The eventual snowmelt coupled with torrential rain caused rivers in the area to rapidly rise, endangering many homes. This came just 13 months after a previous great flood that had forced homeowners in flood plains to rebuild.

“I came home from work and I remember seeing the river and thinking, ‘That’s awful high,’ ” Pat recalled. “I had never seen it like that, so I rushed home to tell Patty we had better move our belongings to higher ground.”

Patty picked up the story from there. “We started packing our things and we heard a loudspeaker outside, telling us we needed to leave right then.” She motioned outside, gesturing a right-to-left direction as if pointing where the sound was coming from.

“It was the Kelso police issuing a mandatory evacuation of our neighborhood. We put most of our things that would go upstairs, up there — and we got out with what we could take.”

The police would circle through the neighborhood repeatedly, issuing a warning that if residents decided to stay, they would not receive emergency services if needed. The Dillons would have to leave the church that they had worked so hard to renovate in the hands of God.

“We drove down 13th and saw all these people — kids, adults, standing on the dike just staring,” Pat said. “They were standing maybe a foot from the rushing water…we ran up there and saw the water was about six inches from going over.

“If that river breached the dike, hundreds here in South Kelso would have lost their homes.”

“And we would have lost the church,” Patty added, staring at the floor.

Silence ruled the conversation shortly after her statement, as if everyone in the room relived the horror of that moment — and imagined what was about to happen.

“We didn’t want to even think about what was going to happen to the church,” Pat said.

The Dillons stayed with their daughter Janelle, who lived across town in Longview. After a sleepless night, they were allowed to come back to the neighborhood, bracing for the worst.

“We were fully prepared to come in and be up to our knees in mud,” said Patty.

Only that didn’t happen. Some in the community call it a miracle, others call it good engineering — but whatever it was, the dike held the Coweeman in its banks. Only a short time prior, engineers had seen water seeping in under the dike and water rushing just short of the Grade Street bridge girders.

Not one inch of water topped the dike, and the leak underneath it stopped as quickly as it began.

“It was the Lord. He kept our church safe, and he made sure everyone in this neighborhood still has a home,” Patty said, smiling.

Today, the Kelso church soldiers on. Pat and Patty Dillon have since continued remodeling the church. Their next projects entail finishing the front restrooms and entryway…which they showed me shortly after we finished talking.

Even their residence attached to the church had received a major facelift — Pat and Patty had put hours, days, weeks into remodeling their living space and for the first time I visited the place, it felt cozy.

We would visit and reminisce for another hour before I had to depart for Vancouver, but my spirit had been encouraged by the Dillons’ tale of how the Lord protected the church they have been entrusted to shepherd.

As I drove south on Interstate 5, I shut the radio off and began to thank the Lord for keeping His hand of protection and providence over the church that I call my home church — a place in which many of my spiritual beliefs came to be, and a central figure in many dreams and visions the Lord has given me for my future.

I continue to pray to this day that the Lord continue to bless that little church on 1008 Walnut Street, and everyone who crosses the threshold of its front door.