Wednesday was the first anniversary of us moving to Uganda. It’s been an eventful year and I thought a recap of it might be nice. March… The month started with our commissioning service. Later in the month we loaded our container and saw that ship off. Then we flew out of Chicago with 26 pieces […]
This part of living in Africa has probably been the most challenging. Before moving to Africa I’d been pretty good about making pretty much everything from scratch. We didn’t buy a lot of mixes. I even made our butter and yogurt from scratch in the states. But I took for granted the readiness of other […]
I told Anna if we got to Friday and nothing had changed (to wit, baby born, un-to wit), then we’d go see the doctor. Well, we went and saw the doctor. Everything is fine with the both of them, but the baby, like all the others, will have to be evicted. Anna has required oxytocin […]
I haven’t blogged in a while. I guess we just got really busy and then the thought of catching up is a little overwhelming. So I’m just going to jump in where we are. Last June we started language study. Its been challenging to say the least! Most weeks we have at least 4 days […]
Today was really overwhelming in many ways.
Early this afternoon – before I’d had a chance to finish lunch and feed everyone – a worker that was helping plant some cactus like bushes outside our fence around the property broke a water main. I’d just finished putting some clothes on the line and starting another load of laundry when I heard a strange noise. It sounded like really hard rain – only it wasn’t raining outside. Then we looked up the hill behind our house and saw the plume of water. Water was shooting into the air for 25 or so feet by the road. I ran to our water shut off and tried to turn it off. That did nothing. So I ran up the road to see if they knew how to turn it off. No one seemed to know. Finally one lady said that they had to turn it off at the water office in town.
By the time I got back to the house there were several inches of water in our house, running down the hill, through the garage and then into our kitchen, hall way, bedroom (though not as bad there) and living room. It was also running up the hall and into the other side of the house that has just been finished. Thank God, nothing was sitting down that would get seriously hurt except for a few things in our bedroom and James was able to get them picked up really fast. Only a couple of our mattresses got wet and a few odds and ends that could either be thrown away or washed.
But the water was still coming. I started working at sweeping it out of the front door. But it was still coming. I’d barely make a dent in it but it would fill again. I went to the kitchen and just couldn’t get it out of there so had to stop. I worked and worked and worked and lost all track of time. I wished I could throw up because of the stress of it and because it just made me sick to my stomach. Finally, 45 min. later they got the water shut off. But the damage was done and I didn’t know what to do to get it all out. I called my parents (thank God for skype!) and got an okay connection, enough for them to be able to hear me. Then I called the only missionary I could find the number for on James’ phone. He said they would be here as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile I’d been bawling my eyes out, then gritting my teeth and working frantically, then crying again and on and on. The guard kept coming to the door and apologizing (it was a worker that he’d gotten that broke the main). I told him that it would all be fine and that I would be okay, believe it or not. Osbert came and told me he was sorry. I told him I would be fine. It was just so overwhelming! All that water and mud!
Finally, the several of the missionaries and several of the Africans arrived and started helping. In about an hour all the water was out and we could start cleaning and mopping. A couple of the missionary girls that are here stayed and helped me mop and clean and in a couple hours after that we were as done as we could get it.
I’m so thankful for all those that came and helped! It was such a blessing! I’m thankful that we didn’t have our container here yet because then we would have had so many more things in the garage and house and they would have been ruined. I’m thankful that the damage to the property wasn’t worse. It washed away a lot of the hill behind our house but not all of it and we can build it back up and level it.
The worst thing right now is that the huge volume of water coming past our house and into the road washed away some dirt around the septic tank and caused parts of two sides of it to collapse. It wasn’t very well built in the first place and I think that this revealed a weakness in it’s structure that would have come out eventually but this just sped it up. Now we have to get our septic tank repaired as it is sitting open and other sides of it could collapse at any time, if there is a lot of rain or something.
I’ve also been able to laugh about it – Here I was, the crazy white lady running up and down the road asking how to turn the water off, asking people to turn off the water to their house to see if it helped, splashing water out of our front door (it had to go over the sill we have for our screen door!). As we were mopping we got started singing “Showers of Blessing” and one of the verses seemed so appropriate:
There shall be showers of blessing
Precious reviving again
Over the hills and the valleys
Sound of abundance of rain.
LOL!
Yep, that was pretty much it – Sound of abundance of rain over the hill and the valleys. Not sure about the showers of blessing yet – but I know that God doesn’t allow things in our life just to make things hard for us. I know He has a blessing in there for us somewhere and we will yet see it. I know this. Because God is *always* good – even when water is pouring down your hill and through your house.
Now I have a stack of laundry a mile high (mostly dirty rags and clothes the kids were wearing that got covered in water and mud) but my house is pretty much clean. I’ll probably have to mop a couple more times to get it completely cleaned up but that isn’t going to be as hard as it would have been. I just need a couple dry days so I can get all the stuff dried on the line. It was nice this morning and the rained most of the afternoon – ironically, it was pouring rain *while* the water was pouring down the hill. God does have a sense of humor.