Flooding, Evacuation, and Home Again!

We were evacuated because of a flood warning last night. Stephen had been out of town at a Conference and caught an earlier plane to be home. Unfortunately the river was rising too fast for my liking, so I just decided to get out and check into a hotel. I was beginning to doubt my decision, because on the river site it looked like it was cresting. Well as I was watching Oprah from the hotel room, the local news cut in with a helicopter showing the evacuation of our neighborhood. A trailer park just south of us in underwater, and they named our development in particular and said there was a mandatory police evacuation. Earlier the Bishop contacted Stephen to make sure that we were okay, and he and his employee came over around lunch time to help me get the house ready since Stephen wasn't going to make it in time. He put up all our furniture and some of the things from the garage upstairs or on the countertops in the kitchen.

Below are some pictures of how I left the house and the river. The river pictures don't do it justice though. The things that look like small branches were actually huge trees with root balls and everything. It was moving really fast and quite scary to drive by. You can barely see the cars in the picture and how much more it had to go. This was at 2:00p.m. Stephen eventually made it back and met with our ward leaders to make sure that everyone had a place to go and then headed up to the hotel. Some friends that live in our town also came and checked into the same hotel. I was at dinner with Benjamin in the restaurant across the parking lot. They came and met me, and Stephen arrived to eat with us soon after that. After that they asked for volunteers so Stephen and our friend left to go sandbag. Stephen came back to the hotel soaking wet and full of sand. We went to sleep sometime early this morning.
Fast forward to today. We are home and all is well. The river crested just below (29. 55 feet) reaching the sides of the levees (30 feet). Stephen came back this morning to check the house and then went and taught his class. He said that the police were in our development and checking address to only let those back in that lived here. At least it made me feel safe even if in my rush to get out the front door was left completely unlocked! I don't know what time the road officially opened again, but he came and got me at the hotel at about 1:00p.m. to carry all the bags so that I wouldn't have to. I was having some pretty close contractions last night in the middle of the night, but I drank tons of water and thankfully they went away. We did get the house in some order today because I need some sort of normal. Although none of the suitcases are unpacked, and they will have to wait until tomorrow because I am not going to over do it.

This post is getting way to wordy. But I feel very blessed to have felt peace and protection. It was surreal to see our neighbors interviewed last night on the news as they were evacuated. Today I found that we had eleven messages on our answering machine of friends and ward members checking in on us not including all the family and friends that called our cell phones to make sure we were okay. Last night as I prayed, I knew that even if we did lose everything that I would still have everything ~ meaning the gospel of Jesus Christ and my loved ones. To sum it up, we are home, happy, and safe!