The BEST hugs in a long time!!!

Today I met a darling little girl named Sierra and at 1am this morning Serra's older brother woke Sierra and their mom because he smelled smoke.  Yes, you guessed it, their apartment building was on fire.  Sierra, mom and older brother left the apartment with only their "jammies" on and whatever shoes they had time to throw on their feet.  When your home is on fire, what do you do?  You RUN and that's what they did.  I have told many people that the only thing that terrifies me more that an F5 Tornado (and it must be an F5) is a FIRE!  Fires are so fast, furious and quite often deadly that it is terrifying to find yourself and your family in the middle of one.  I saw this story of the fire on the news this morning as I was getting ready for work and it made me so sad that another fire had displaced 16 families from their homes.  As it happens, Sierra's mommy works at the same place that I do and one of my coworkers called me to tell me about her situation.  I decided that ERK needed to do something to help this family and called our "mama bear" at ERK to get the go-ahead.  After numerous phone calls, I found Sierra's mommy's phone number and set up a time to meet Sierra, mom and older brother at the local WalMart to give them a Gift Card from ERK to help them buy some clothes that weren't "1am jammies"that had been through an evacuation.  Sierra's family are not sure when they will be able to return to their home to check out the damage and if anything is salvagable, so we at ERK want to make sure that they have things to call their own.  Once they are able to evaluate the situation, we have a room full of items that have been donated to the program and I told Sierra's mommy that if need be, we can have a "shopping day" to help replace lost items from their home.  When I left Sierra, mom and older brother they were headed to shop and when they gave me a hug of Thanks it was the BEST hug I have had in a very long, long, long time!  I love being able to help and being a part of ERK makes that a possibility!!!  Have a happy and safe weekend.