After church was let out, Enrique had to go to the special emergency meeting and then we came home. He got us all situated, with the needed wood to keep the house warm. He changed and was going to be gone the rest of the day. He was in charge of the help in our little area. We had many people stop to ask if we were ok, if we had power, if they could start cutting the trees down..... So finally our house was pretty much the last one in our little area that needed help (to cut the trees). Our friend came and asked to start because there was enough man power, dump trucks, back hoes, and chainsaws. I found Enrique and he agreed it would be better to do it now than wait for the insurance people to do it.
What happened next I did not expect what so ever. We had 5-7 men working on the tree in the back and 3 on the front tree. Then more people from our neighborhood start showing up. Then all of a sudden there were 50+ people in our yard and 5 chainsaws going crazy. It was like ants, very orderly and they just kept working until it was all done. It was the most amazing, most humbling thing ever. We didn't know half the people that were helping us. We had people from different wards, stakes, and cities that just 'felt' like they needed to help and just drove around to find where they could help. Our street had no parking available anywhere. There were trucks with trailers just lining up, filling their trailers and going to the dump. There was a line of trucks just waiting their turn to take the next load.
I've never experienced anything like this. It was truly amazing, such a spiritual experience for me. The Lord will not leave you comfortless for sure. Not that I was that way but the fact that people just showed up, didn't ask what to do, they just did. I had to start sending people to another house we had just found out about that needed help. After 1 1/2 hours all 3 trees were basically done. We were just waiting for the stumps to go. The city worker working the track hoe was trying to convince the dump truck driver to take the stumps if we cut them smaller. He finally agreed. So Enrique ran to get our friends with chainsaws and they spent almost another hour trying to cut the stumps smaller.
The whole time we had people in our yard, I was either videoing it or taking photos. The kids were inside sleeping, it was so funny. We had all those chainsaws and people everywhere and the kids slept through most of it. Gaby woke up towards the end and she was just shocked at what was happening. She started helping too. She hauled small branches to the front then she started raking up the little debris into piles. Lili woke up too but just wanted me to carry her all over because she was scared of all the people. Isabel slept through it all.
Once it was too dark and everyone was gone, we tried going to the church for dinner because we were told to go there if you still didn't have power. Well, no one was there. So we were on our way home and realized our friends had to cut down their huge tree before this storm or it would fall on their house. So Enrique got out to help and I ran the kids home to go potty. When we got home I saw the power guys on our roof trying to hook up the power. So I went out to talk to them and they said it might not work because the pole to the house was so damaged. By the time we went back to our friend's house, the tree was already down. We ended up going in and talking with them and having hot chocolate and hot soup.
We came home and found out that Angel (Enrique's brother) had his baby, well Odette had the baby. :) We talked to them for a while. Later we regained partial power in the house. The furnace and 2 upstairs bedroom lights came one. Nothing else. So we called our neighbor (who is an electrician) to see if it was safe to stay or not, he said it was ok but not to use the stove, washer and dryer and it would be fine. Just as we were about to fall asleep, the rest of the power came on. It was about 10:30 Sunday night we got power back. So we were powerless from about 6:30am Thursday to 10:30 pm Sunday.
We had quite the adventure. I am so grateful that we followed the prophets council and we were prepared. We used our wood storage, food storage and the other things in place and made due. However, I did learn what we weren't prepared enough for and need to adjust some things to make them better. I am also grateful for prayer and a loving father in heaven who answers our prayers, even little girls prayers. I am so grateful for those who came and gave us so much service. Most of all, I am so grateful that my precious little family is safe and healthy.
