Posted By Nancy Andrews on February 10, 2010
It’s hard to believe that is has been so long since I posted on the blog! But life has been interesting to say the least! Feb 1st on Preparation day, we got our laundry done etc. it was rather cloudy and blustery, so we decided we wouldn’t go site seeing that day. In fact we had just planned to get out and visit some inactive members in the evening, when we got a call telling us that all of the missionaries needed to stay in their apartments, as there were storm warnings for the island. We have had to laugh a little, in the past, because it seems like every since we got here, if there is a little mist in the air, everyone has their umbrellas up and acts like it is a real deluge! But we stayed in as directed and were spending the afternoon ironing and checking the news on the internet, when it really did start to RAIN. Actually, we had had a hard rain storm a couple of hours earlier in the day that, that had caused water to blow into our balcony area and get all of my laundry wet and put water all over the floor there. It even blew some water in through our spare bedroom window- it was closed but I found a puddle of water on the floor. So we had cleaned that up earlier and got everything dried up again by hanging the laundry around inside of our piso. So by then we had decided that maybe the reason everyone grabs an umbrella when it starts to rain a tiny bit, is because they know it MIGHT turn into a deluge!!
Anyway we were kind of watching out the window as it started raining really hard again!! I told Ron,” It looks like a small creek with little waves in it running down the edge of the street in front of our apartment building.” Pretty soon , within five minutes that creek has grown to one lane, then two lanes wide, then three, and four!! The entire four lanes and part of the sidewalks were a raging river about 10 inches deep with muddy water running down towards the main part of the city and eventually I guess ,towards the ocean. Huge garbage containers floated by. Large boulders 10 to twelve inches in diameter rumbled down the streets, pushed along by the force of the water. It was quite a site to behold! Every direction we looked the other streets seemed to be experiencing the same things, but Belgica is much wider than the others. It was amazing though, people kept driving in it, trying to get home I guess, although there was much less traffic than normal. The buses kept running too. I was sure some of the cars would stall out in the water but I only saw one that did! We watched as the little ic cream shop across the street from us, that has an entrance about 5 feet below street level was getting flooded. They did really well though. They kept pushing out the water with mops and brooms towards some drains and baracaded the entrance with garbage containers that had floated down there and were able to stay ahead of it pretty well. In probably a hour or so the whole thing was over and the water was gone, leaving lots of rocks and dirt everywhere, but they were back in business and life seemed to go on like this was normal here! The only way it really effected us much was that our power was out for about 18 hours, but since we live up on the fifth floor we were in no danger ourselves. We thought our car would probably be ruined as our garage is 3 stories down, but when we checked it out the drain system that they have, had prevented all but just a little water from going into the garages. However it must have put down a great amount of water in avery short time because the flower beds ,here in the patio area, near the tennis court, that would only recieve water coming strait down, not any run off , looked like swimming pools, filled to the brim! So we estimated that we probably recieved more than 12 inches of rain in that one day! The heavy rains in the hills above us caused it all to turn into a flash flood. The next morning we saw that other areas were hit a lot harder than we were. There were boulders and piles of mud and dirt everywhere! The tranvia had been stopped totally by the piles of mud and rocks that filled some of the bridges, that cross over the barancas up to 6 inches deep. When we saw the papers we realized that this really was very unsual, and some areas above us had store windows broken out, cars rolled, and basement apartments and garages filled with water. I had tried to take pictures from our window but the rain was so hard you couldn’t see very well. I took a couple of videos, but they our too long to down load on this site. Anyway I will try to take a couple of pictures of the ones that were in the paper to put here with my own poor ones, just for the record.
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Pictures from our apartment window. Power was out.
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Streets full of water!
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Workers digging out the mud and rocks from under the tranvia
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Street undermined by the water, garbage truck fell in!
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Rocks and dirt pushed up against cars in the streets
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Some areas sustained much more damage than we saw here.
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A garage area that filled with mud andd rock! Ours was fine!
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Working hard- Tranvia running again, and back to normal
People are amazing. Within 24 hours you could hardly tell anything had happened in all of the areas we see in our daily activities. The park lost most of the gravel off of the paths, and there is lots of street cleaning going on etc. We meet on Thursday evenings with three ladies from here in Santa Cruz who want to improve their English. Anyway they told us that this is not at all normal, but that in 2002 there was a hurricane here that was lots worse than this, so I guess we can get less than ideal weather here! It is lovely most of the time. Anyway we have had a lot of fun with these three ladies, doing what they call intercambios. We help them with their English and they help us with our spanish. One is a phamacist, one is the wife of an executive , and one is a secretary- none are members of our church, but they are wonderful people and it is a good experience for us.
We had Zone conference this past weekend, as well as an area conference via satellite for all of Spain and Portugal. It was wonderful for the local people to be able to listen to apostles speak speciically to them, in their own language. We also found out that as of July we will be serving in the Madrid, Spain mission rather than the Malaga Mission! But no we are not moving, they are just changing the boundaries, and are assigning the Canaries to the Madrid Mission, mostly because there are direct flights here from Madrid. When missionaries are tranferred here from the mainland they always have to fly up to Madrid fiirst before they can fly here, the mission President, too, so it only makes sense and will save the church a lot of money. So any missionaries that are here in July will change to the Madrid mission. They are not so excited about that here, as it is a lot colder in Madrid, but the Madrid missionaries are ecstatic that they will have opportunities to serve in the canaries!
We had a wonderful opportunity to help the full time missionaries the other day. A man and his three sons came in to the church where we were having our area conference on Sunday, just as the meeting was ending. He wants to find a better life for his family and is seaching for truth. I visited with them a while, and afterwards he said he really wanted his wife to meet us, as he felt it would help her to want to learn more about the church. She grew up a catholic but had pretty well decided that religion does not help in this world. Anyway we ageed to go with the Elders and had a wonderful time meeting this family. We arranged to meet at the church, as the man said that his wife was very nervous about her house with all of the mess of five children (3 year old twins). It turned out that it was rather damp and cool at the church in Puerto de la Cruz where they live, so they invited us all over to their house. They are from Germany, but have lived here for 12 years. They all speak German- the children go to an English school, and all but the twins speak Spanish fluently too! Three languages, can you imagine! Unlike the normal apartment living here, these people had a beautiful home overlooking the city. He is a professor or something, they really didn’t say, but he has chosen to not work for the past year or so, and just spend more time helping with the family. They had the clutter of a normal family of small children but apparently decided that we were down home folk that would understand. That was a major breakthrough. They must have money because they also have a home in Germany where they spend the summers, near their family. Anyway we really bonded well, and the wife and I were able to share together. She had lost a child ,stillborn, and had had a hard time accepting that that child had no soul,as her priest had told her. I shared with her our beliefs about eternal families, and that that child will be hers forever in the gospel plan. She agreed that babies have no need for baptism, and are innocent and pure in God’s eyes. I think in time that this family will accept the restored gospel and will be a wonderful strength to this area. It will be hard, as there are not many youth their age in that little branch. The father is going to bring the boys up to Santa Cruz on Saturdays to play soccer with the missionaries and the youth here, as he feels that will help them want to be more involved in this new life that he is seeking for his family.
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Tags: Balcony Area, Bedroom Window, Deluge, Five Minutes, Grabs, Hard Rain, Inactive Members, Laundry, Missionaries, Muddy Water, Piso, Raging River, Rain Storm, Sidewalks, Spare Bedroom, Storm Warnings, Tiny Bit, Umbrella, Umbrellas, Waves
Sunday was a great, but difficult day. Sacrament meeting was wonderful. The Branch Preident spoke,and really gave a good talk. The district President, President Diaz also spoke. He is a wonderful man, and is doing a very fine job. He spend much of the day trying to help us work out some of the difficulties we are having here. One of the big problems that we have is that they have a hard time recognizng that all worthy men who have been ordained hold the priesthood, and need opportunities to use it. When our new members request who they would like to confirm them and give them the gift of the Holy Ghost, it is totally ignored, even though that person is worthy and has prayerfully prepared themselves to give that blessing. The branch presidency feel that they should always do all of the ordinances. So that was a bit difficult for us all. But the important things happened none the less.
