Flood Recovery part 2: Pics from the flood

Here are some pictures of the flood damage so everyone can take a look at them. Some friends of mine have a video that I'm trying to get ahold of so I can post that here as well, it's supposed to show the flood waters rising up to our house. In all there was about 6-8" of water in the family room and master bed room. If the water had gone up 2" more, it would have flooded our whole house. God is truly in control. Onto the pics:


The front and back doors to our house, after the sandbags were taken down.



(L)There was mud everywhere inside our bedroom, and (R) you can see the
Christmas presents that were hidden under our bed.



(L) Our Family Room was also covered with mud, and the tile at the base of the wood stove is starting to crack. (R) It's hard to see from the picture, but there is a crack on the left side because the ground under the slab was washed away and the slab broke and settled down there.



Both of these are pics of the Family room once we got the carpet out and the sheetrock cut away. We found some weird stuff in the walls, including a pop can (full of something) and a broomstick.



This is some of the fun mold that was growing in our bedroom. So we cut it out, replaced it with some wood from our shed and walked in there today to see more mold growing.

So there you have it, I'll post some pics of the work as it's being done and eventually the finished product.

-Jeff-

Flood Recovery part 1: Neighbors helping neighbors

I LOVE THE HOME DEPOT!!!!! They are the greatest company ever!!!!! In a time where they should be looking to rebuild their own store, and really could be looking to turn a quick buck, they seem to be genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. I don't know if this is company policy or was the actions of two very thoughtful employees, but they have a lifelong customer in me because of how they've handled this flood situation.

Over the past week there have been several "coincidences" that have helped me to see the hand of God at work in our current problems. Because of these things several people have commented on how great our attitude has been. It's not too hard to be positive when you can see that God is on your side and working on your behalf. I'm sure I'll forget some things, but here is the short list:

1. Our Rental House in Stanwood. It didn't sell for several months. We were very worried about it, but God has shown Himself faithful because if it had sold a couple months ago we would have invested the money in our house, now we have money available in case FEMA doesn't cover everything.
2. Our vacation. We wanted to go on vacation for months, and were really hoping to spend Halloween in Disneyland. Because our Senior Pastor was leaving the church, we took the last opportunity we had to take a vacation and we were warm and safe while everything was happening. I'm sure if we were there we would have stayed too long at our house, and who knows what would have happened to our kids.
   
3. Our car. As soon as we get the money from our house we're going out to buy a minivan. I've been dreaming for a while about walking into a dealership with cash and trying to get the best deal possible. But if that would have happened our car would have been underwater in our driveway, which is a little lower than the rest of the house. Instead it was safe at a parkinglot in Seatac. Plus, they detailed it for us while we were gone.
4. The outpouring of love from friends and strangers. To date we've had about $550 cash, groceries and a dehumidifier given to us, not to mention all of the people who helped us take care of the house while we were gone. One lady overheard us talking at Disneyland and walked up and gave us $20. But the most amazing thing so far has been how people have really stepped up to help us, from John and Susie pulling our stuff out of the water, Melody and the gang getting most of the water up with a carpet shampooer, or my uncle and grandpa helping us get new sheetrock in place, you all have helped us and blessed us more than you'll ever know.
5. The Home Depot. This was so cool, it deserves it's own line. We had heard that a dehumidifier would really help us, so we went to Home Depot to look for one. The only one they had was $220. Tiff and I couldn't afford that, so we passed on it. The kids were getting fidgety so I took them to the car while she payed, and while in line one of the employees walked over with the dehumidifier and placed it in our cart. When Tiffanney balked at the gift, the lady told her "This is what neighbors are for". In almost a week of use it has pulled over 230 pints of water out of the air and has made the whole house much more livable.

This store is right next to Home Depot in Chehalis

If you can't see the hand of God in all of that, you're trying really hard not to. God has blessed us indeed. BTW, our house closed Thursday and we got the money on Friday. I guess God knew what He was doing the whole time.

-Jeff-

I dug through the trash the other day.

Blog posts are supposed to have catchy titles in order to attract more readers, so how did I do? I did have to dig through the trash, but first a little backstory.

In the middle of August Tiffanney and I put our rental house on the market. Since then we've been making two housepayments (no, that's not why I dug through a trash can, we're still getting there, hold on a minute). FINALLY, October 29th we got an offer on the house!!! Yeah!!! We'd spent some time praying and fasting about the situation and felt like God would get us an offer by the end of October, which He did.

The next week I get word from my Senior Pastor that I need to preach on the 11th, only to find out later that he is interviewing at another church (I knew before I preached that Sunday). He comes back and tells us that he is leaving on December 9th.

We've been desiring a vacation for a while now, but making two housepayments makes it impossible to save any money. We decided that we would go on Dec 3rd thru the 8th, assuming the house had closed by then. It didn't. This left us with the hard decision of waiting until we had the money in hand and possibly not taking a vacation for several months (until the new pastor comes in) or putting it all on credit cards and trusting that it would close while we were gone (it didn't).

None of this led to me spilling trash all over the floor in the post office though. Here's the main culprit. On Tuesday afternoon we were running through Toon Town in Disneyland, trying to decide where we should eat after we went to visit Mickey Mouse. Standing on the steps of Mickey's house we got a phone call. It was our Childrens pastor. She said that guys from the National Guard were standing at our front door and were waiting for our permission to put up sand bags around our house. We froze, what could we do? Absolutely yes, please sandbag, but then what? How can we get home, and what will we find when we get there? We didn't make it to see Mickey the entire week.

To make a long story short, here's what the next few days looked like. We called around to find out about changing our plane tickets, but the waters didn't receed until Thurday, meaning that even if we had flown home we couldn't have gotten to our house. We had to trust the people in our church to help us out, and they came through for us in a BIG way. Even during the flood we had people over at our house giving us updates, and once the waters went down a little there was a crew over there moving furniture, building fires and trying to make sure that everything was contained.

We got home on Saturday just after Sunset, and were greeted by piles of clothes in our living room and all of our furniture in our dining room. In all there was about 8 inches of water in the bottom of our house and only our family room and master bedroom were affected. I will detail the clean up process and our interactions with insurance companies, FEMA and Home Depot in other blogs ('cause this one's getting too long), but right now I know you want to know about rubbish.

Before we leave our house for a few days, we always try and make sure everything is clean and that any food that might spoil is taken care of. We also typically eat a lot of the food in our house, knowing that when we get back we'll be grocery shopping anyways. So we returned home not just to piles of clothes, but we had no food and our vacation had been payed for with credit cards, so we had no money to buy food. Add to that the fact that the house still hasn't closed and we need to make Decembers house payment still and I think it's safe to say we were a little stressed out. We called a friend who works with the mission and got some groceries from him, and tried to go to the store to pick up some newspapers for firestarters. First we stopped at the post office and I saw that we got those little circular ads in the mail. I thought to myself, if I got one everyone must have, and everyone throws them away, so I jumped into the garbage can and pulled out all the newspaper I could find. I only stopped when I stuck my hand on top of a moldy banana peel. I was so proud of myself for thinking of this that it didn't even occur to me that it was people's trash until that point.

I'm not used to asking for help from people. Usually I'm going out of my way to help others out. To be in the position where I need help is most humbling. Thanks to everyone who's helped during this time, you've all blessed me so much. Please remember to keep praying for the flood victims here in Washington, we can all use it.

In closing I just want to say that while the majority of this post was probably a little depressing to read, we're doing well and we can see God's hand in everything that's happened all along the way. I just needed to vent and this is one way that I can do that.

-Jeff-