Hope ya'lls week was great and are all doing well! This week has been pretty crazy and very eventful! I don't know if ya'll have been watching the news but Louisiana is currently water logged! So it has kind of made our week kind of really hard to do a lot of missionary work!
Tuesday we had zone conference and it was so fun to meet all the different missionaries! The sisters are all so amazing and I loved them all! We have an elder whose dad owns the Boston Celtics so maybe I get hooked up with some really good tickets one day!
We were able to meet with Jasmine the beginning of the week and was able to give her a lesson on the Plan of Salvation! She loved it and the spirit was so strong! She has been raised by her step mom to think that life ends when we die so she was so happy and excited to know that life doesn't stop when we die, but has just begun in a sense! We committed her to baptism and are hoping for the end of this month! Her boyfriend believes that Mormon's are not Christian so he has been holding her back from choosing date! But we know she has such an amazing testimony and that she will come to realize baptism is what she wants/ needs in her life!
The rain started up about Thursday and I have never seen so much rain in my lifetime! It was so crazy and even filled up a bucket we had outside full of water!! Since we are surrounded by three rivers we knew there would be flooding but didn't realize it would be record breaking flooding! We have a lesson Friday night that we were excited about. It was with Rob, a very awesome investigator, and Caelan, a 1 year convert,18 years old, and has the missionary fire. We are teaching one of her friends that we are SO excited about!
We show up to Caelan's house ready to pick her up and her mom comes and talks to us saying all this weather lingo that goes over our head but we did hear, "...voluntary evacuation...surge coming... 20-30ft wave... 10pm tonight.."
What?
All's well though we go to our appointment promising to keep her safe and that we will be back within the hour. The lesson goes alright, not as planned but it's good. Then when we come back we see and hear the real story.
We saw many police lights blocking roads with signs and detours. The local McDonalds only has the drive through open because they are so close to the water that has flooded Boston Rd. Local officials are closing down roads that are flooded already. Northern Louisiana has gotten so much rain and storms that their rain fall will be coming down the rivers that usually flows into the lake but Lake Pontchartrain is very full to start with. There is nowhere for the water to go! There is expected to be a 20-30ft surge(wave) of water coming in around 10-11pm that night that will flood most of Covington.
Awesome. Lets go home, shall we?
Needless to say we are a bit freaked.
We call Sister Hansen, our mission presidents wife and stress relief person and tell her what we know. Her and President Hansen reads off a list of streets that are under a voluntary evacuation list.
The list included 8th Ave.
We live on 9th Ave.
We live pretty close to the Bogue Falaya River. Only pretty close though. Like its on 1st Ave and we're on 9th.
But we made the executive decision to stay and park our car on a bit higher ground and pray.
Alot.
We go to bed that night not knowing anything about what was to come in the next few hours but it was quite a stress ridden night.
We wake up the next day and blissfully enough nothing happened! Not even a lightning! Not even rain! We have trees blocking our view to the left but no water in our front yard or neighbors to the right!
It was quite anticlimactic let me tell you.
So we do our morning routine and finish our studies and lunch and finally its time to go out around noon. We leave our apartment in our car and the moment we past those trees we see water. Everywhere.
Our neighbors to the right and all the houses on the next several blocks over have water all in their yard. not in the house yet but flooded yards. We continue to where we are going to service but its closed because it is in a flooded area as well.
Our first thought is Rob. He lives down the road closer to the Bogue Falaya. We hurry back home and get on our bikes to hurry over to Rob check out more damage in our immediate neighborhood, see what we can do to help and talk to people.
As the day went on, as we kept talking and making the rounds the water kept rising and rising. it rose probably over a foot maybe 2 while we were out. The road to our apartment flooded.
Sections of roads are completely flooded, the dips in the road. The Bogue Falaya is overflowing. People homes have sandbags trying to keep the water out. All of this destruction within less than a mile of our own apartment. The damage is endless.
Anyone who lived by the Bogue Falaya river, Abita river, and the Tchefuncte river were flooded.
We keep getting 'Are yall okay?' texts and hearing about homes and neighborhoods that have feet of water in them, and members of our ward that got flooded.
The road to the church was completely washed out! There is a 6 foot drop of the asphalt gone from the road! The Church was fine but the neighborhood it is in was flooded baaaad
By Saturday flooding was literally everywhere! We decided to bike around our neighborhood to see how everything was and it was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen. Houses were seriously just filled with water and people were just getting everything they could out of the them. What is crazy is that these houses were literally just down the block! Luckily the National Guard was able to evacuate all the families in that area and are excited to be helping them out with lots of service this week!
One of my favorite families in the ward got a foot of water in their house so since church was cancelled (the road to the church literally washed away) we spent most of our day getting everything out of their house and saving anything they could! Since this family feeds us weekly we told them we would find someone else to feed us this week and they were not too happy with that and insisted we still come! I was seriously blown away! Here's a family who has lost almost everything but is still willing to give back in anyway that we can! Instead of feeling sorry for themselves they counted their blessings and gave back in anyway they could!
It made me really realize how I can apply that to my life as a missionary. A mission isn't easy and some days are definitely harder then others! But if you give it your all and focus less on yourself and more of those around you the blessings will be so much greater then we can ever possibly imagine!
I am so excited for this next week to come and to see all the service activities we get to be a part of! Thank you all so much for your love, prayers, and support! They are definitely help me out so much! Hope ya'll have the best week! Much love ya'll :)
Cleaning up at the Nolan's
I seriously taught this family last week:( this kills me!!
Pictures of the flooding
Biking around the neighborhood to check out the flooding
First beignet... I have had about ten since
Zone Conference with Sister B
This puts the turd to shame..
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