The POWER is Back!

Hip Hip HOORAY! We have power again. After 12 long horrible days and 11 agonizing nights, our power came back on! Thanks to Hurricane Ike the past few weeks have been CRAZY.

We took a few photos and video, but we will have to post it later. The hardest thing was definitely NO POWER for almost two weeks. Bridger and other members worked for quite a few days chopping down trees, cleaning yards etc. We were really blessed. We just lost a little bit of our fence and some shingles. Many of our friends had trees go through their homes, and flood damage.

There was a little bit of mass panic here after the storm. People waited in lines for over 4 hours to try and get gasoline. The wait to get into the grocery store was a few hours long also. They are very worried about looting, so they limit the number of people who can go into the store at one time. It was very interesting.

Another hard thing was not being able to use our water. We got the go ahead to start using our water again about a week ago, and that made things nicer. It's a good thing we had filled up our tubs before the storm, because we ended up using some of that water. We had plenty of bottled water to drink, and food to eat. Unfortunately because of the power outage we lost EVERYTHING in our fridge and freezer. We also lost about 90% of the things in our deep freeze. UGH...all that money down the drain.

Some of our friends who received power only a few days after the storm were kind enough to let us borrow their generator. It was a life-saver. We could plug in our fridge, and run a fan. We even plugged in our tv and wii one night and had a little party here!

It was AMAZING to see the community and neighborhood really pull together. It is sad that is takes something like this to help us bind together though. Everyone was constantly knocking on everyone elses doors and asking if you needed help moving broken trees, or if you needed water or food. We got to know most of our neighbors a lot better.

Since it was so HOT and insanely crazy with no power after about 7 or 8 days we left our house and stayed with a friend about 8 minutes away who had power. She was so kind to let us all stay in her air conditioned house. She even fed us! THANK YOU SO MUCH! You saved us big time!

Church was cancelled the first Sunday, since many roads were blocked by trees and power lines. However last Sunday we still had sacrament meeting. The power was still out at the church, so it was a bring your own flashlight to sacrament meeting. It was very interesting. However, the Spirit was still there and it was amazing to see all of the members so dedicated to be in the chapel at 8:30 a.m. Many of the members still did not have power (we didn't either), so it was fun to chat and make sure everyone was okay.

Anyways, I'm sure you are all bored of reading this, but I thought I would post a little update. I'm sure there will be more posts on the way with some pictures and more details.