This week has been extreeeemely long. It has been a long waiting game of anticipation.
It all started last Sunday when we were tracting in Tallow Creek and on our favorite less active friends who lets us park our car by her house was weeding when we were getting ready to leave. She was telling us that she was getting stuff done today to prepare for this week because the news says its going to rain Wednesday-Saturday so we were in for a big storm.
Greeeaaaaaaat. Now remember that we are just coming off of the tornado experience so we were ready for a couple weeks break before we gear up again.
So the waiting game started.
For the next 3 days, (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday) every. single. person. we talked to told us to be careful in the upcoming days because the weather was going to get really bad.
Can I pause for a second and tell you about the Southern people for a second?
So young adult girls are protected more than life itself sometimes. If we are knocking doors at dark or even dusk even if its only 6:30 in the evening, we will get... I don't want to say chastised or scolded but definitely a concerned talking to that goes something like this. "Now what on earth are two pretty young ladies like yourselves doing out this late at night, coming up to strange people's doors. (not even a question) Now yall should not be out this late especially in the dark. (its only 6:00pm) Have you seen the state the world is in these days. (still not a question, sometimes they will continue on this for a while) Now you gals are about the age of my daughters. Yall better get home and watch out in the next couple days. Weathers gonna get real bad. Rain and thunderstorms. Now you get home now. Yall shouldn't be out here!"
Its wonderful to be cared about so. so. so. much.
No but really. Its awesome. :) they're sweet and sometimes its a good conversation starter of why we are out here.
ANYWAYS.
Monday- Wednesday were really awful, extremely gloomy and windy days. like blow your skirt away windy. That was funny some days. But very overcast, grey, never see the sun, so humid that its just clammy and warm. You knew there was a storm coming.
Finally the long awaited days of the storm arrived.
We were expecting something very similar to last time with extremely heavy rain, pounding our roof in and being locked in for days at a time since is was going to be several days.
Thursday comes and its a gross day, overcast, grey, just sprinkling all day. Quite disappointing.
Then finally around 3ish it starts raining real hard and we get put on lockdown. It only lasts until 5pm. Alot of rain but really not as much as we were thinking... Life goes on.
That night it still lightning and thundered so loud and so bright all night. I slept well but poor Sis S didn't get a wink :( rough night
Friday is also not very exciting. We never know the weather so we just plan our day like normal and go about our duties. Service, tracting, popping in on people, visiting less actives and investigators.
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.
Alls 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 its 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.
 |
| We live on 9th and Monroe and this is 10th and Madison. 2 blocks away |
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.
 |
| Trying to get into our neighborhood. This is 8th Ave and Tyler. If you look where the water stops and turn left and go down the street just a little bit... thats our apartment. |
 |
| Just past that stop sign is Robs house. The stop sign is 8th and Jefferson |
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.
 |
| Standing outside Robs house looking at the road |
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.
 |
Trying to get to something....not us!
(gross don't ever do this. the sewer is backed up in this water. and snakes. and disease.)
|
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.
 |
| Seeing good days biking around the floods!! |
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. With all the damage to the church neighborhood, church was cancelled on Sunday! First time in my life!
Sunday was spent visiting others and doing service for our favorite less active family, the Nolans, where we eat at every Wednesday night. They got a foot of water and our ward joined together to help out. I'm so grateful for the relationship we have with them to make this hard time easier.
 |
| Cleaning up the Nolans on Sunday |
These next couple days will be filled with clean up and service with our classic yellow Mormon Helping Hands shirts on.
This flood really hit close to home and was shocking to hear everyone talk about it. This bad of a flood is historic for Covington and no one can remember the last time a flood this bad has hit Covington. That means this was real bad. 60, 70, 80 years+ bad.
But I am again reminded of the promise of safety missionaries have.
The love our Heavenly Father has for us is so real!
I know that we were protected because we should have had damage or at least more water than we should have. The floods did not even touch our yard.Our ditches were full, yes but our yard was very dry. We didn't even loose power once. We were protected as well as the Elders in our area.
I'm grateful to be here so I can help the best I can!
Satan is so real and tries to bring us down (as Sister Stevenson likes to say "Satan controls the weather!") but with God all things are possible. Through Christ all things can heal and be made alive! I'm so grateful for this time to be the Lord's servant and to serve with all my might right now! I know people have been prepared for us this moment to go and talk to them and just help and love them.
I'm so excited to go to work this week and do all the Heavenly Father has planned for us!
I love yall so much and I'm grateful for all the prayers!
My mind was in two places this week with all the floods and work but also at home with yall this week with the special occasion :) I wouldn't have it another way though!
I'm so happy happy happyyyyy for the new baby in the fam and all the pictures. Welcome Lukeypoooo and I can't wait to meet him :)
yay yay yay! I love yall so so much! Yall are the best!
Miss ya bunches.
Live life and see good days :)
xoxoxoxo
Safe Sister Sades
So crazy story. One of the majorly flooded areas is a neighborhood called Tallow Creek. Its a couple miles from our apartment and my favorite place to go tracting because its where the closest members to us live and its so safe and a great community feel to it. The last couple weeks Sister Stevenson and I have tracted this neighborhood so so much and its been great! We love it! Houses close together, nice people, everybodys outside, best place for a missionary ever.
As I was researching the damage and going through pictures of the bad flooding I found this.
This is the Tallow Creek neighborhood and this is a family that we tracted into that was so kind and adorable. This crying little boy was the cutest little kid we ever met and he loved to talk to us and ask us a billion questions about our name tags and scriptures we were holding and just so friendly with the cutest, heartmelting smile. We made plans to come back.
Its so crazy how close this flood was to home. The National Guard was in our neighborhood. In homes only minutes away from ours. People that we talked to last week now have their lives flipped upside down and trying to put things back together. Its never been so close before.
No comments:
Post a Comment