Hello, Hello!
Well, if any of you have watched the news you will know that Upstate New York, and more specifically my area of Binghamton and Endicott, are under water. Preaching the gospel to every creature including the fishes is a little hard but hey the scriptures do say to preach the gospel to every creature. Just kidding, BUT we did have massive flooding here. The Susquehanna River swelled to a depth of 40 feet (14' is flood stage) and many homes were destroyed. Thankfully we were ok - no power outage or leakage. But we were protected by the nearby high school which is right next to the river; the water came up to the 5th highest row in the stadium and all you could see were two poles, which are the goal posts and a roof of the equipment shed. It was awesome. We almost had to evacuate but the fire department never stopped by. All of the schools were cancelled until further notice, though today they are back in session. Church was composed of three units: us, the Owego Ward and the Susquehanna Branch. Many of those cities are still under water too.
Wednesday when it was raining we were trying to get out to Binghamton to see a member but as we were sitting at the bus junction and we listened to the radio screaming, "We can't get through this road. It is closed!" or "The freeway just flooded!" We looked at each other and had a strong feeling to get off the bus and go back home. We ran into the Elders in our area and they gave us a look of "Slackers, it is just rain" when we told them we were heading back. Later we found out that the bridges were flooded and if we had gone we wouldn't have been able to return home till Saturday. We felt like the Lord was looking out for us.
So we were more or less stuck in Endicott for the entire week with no way to get out. But we made the most of it and found a few more people to teach. All of this is a great conversation starter. It is amazing how disasters bring people together, but at the same time what is most important to people comes out. We saw many people at the grocery stores buying essentials but many more buying cases of beer to help take the edge off. There are lots of service projects ahead of us but we are fine and safe. Plus I have awesome pictures to help visualize what happened. But when it comes to investigators... yeah we didn't get much done this week for obvious reasons, but that's okay. They all know that we are concerned for them. Stay dry in the rest of the country!
** Pictures: The high school, K-mart and the clean up. Did you call the mission at all? Or see it on the news?
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