Let's Build an Ark

It's been an interesting week! First off was the Hobbit House. Basically they are going over this week to do service for the guy who lives in a Hobbit House. It's a house built into a Hill. We got a tour of it. Basically it's like everything energy efficient as you can.  It's built into the hill because that keeps it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Plus they have solar panels, windmills and all that jazz. It's really cool! Each of his lightbulbs only cost 5 cents a year to run. His fridge only costs 20$ a month to run. His tv was like $15. And that is assuming that it's on for 5 hours a day. And plus he is generating all this electricity himself. He barely has to heat or cool his house. Elaborate.

Then the flood hit! Basically it started raining crazy hard and everything around Canandaigua flooded. So the nearby city of Penn Yan got hit the worst. It has a couple of little creeks that flow through it. Well, those little creeks turned into raging rivers with the storm. It took out a couple buildings. It seems that more houses are
flooded than are not. There are a couple of houses that are going to have to be flattened because the damage to the foundation/basements were too much. Roads were just washed away. Sidewalks had the dirt wash out from underneath so the cement just collapsed. No one was killed though. I didn't even hear anything of anyone getting hurt.

So we had exchanges on Thursday with the zone leaders in Penn Yan. So instead both of us went down and split up in the area. This was the first wave of the flooding. It was sunny so we went to the main downtown and helped dig out a couple businesses basements. I'm talking a couple inches of water/mud. Probably 3/4 mud and 1/4 water. We had to pull everything out of the basements to try to salvage it. We helped with a book store, a furniture store, A diner, a performing arts theater or something like that and some other random ones. That was most of Thursday.

Well, weather reports said it was going to rain Thursday night and all through Friday. Flash flood warnings everywhere. So the whole zone got called to meet in Penn Yan at 8:00am to help with the effort. More flooding was happening. We probably filled 2 thousand sandbags. I swear. We had quite the system going. During the filling, someone sped up to pick up sandbags and needed more help. So Brindley, Westwood, Hancock and I jumped in the truck and went with them and a bunch of sandbags. We came to a house that there was a giant hole in the side (assuming where a basement window well was) and inside you could see the basement which was floor to ceiling in water. The water was still flowing towards the house. So we quickly started to dig a trench and use sandbags to divert the water back towards the drainage system. The house was ruined but any more water would kill all chances of saving any of the belongs on the main floor. The lady (non member but friends with a couple members in the Branch) drove us back to get more msandbags and we went back to that neighborhood and helped a couple more random people. That street had a bunch of old people that were stuck in their houses because their driveways collapsed. They won't be able to drive out of there through the 6 ft deep hole. It was pretty crazy!

We finished up doing sandbags and went home sometime that night. Luckily, the rain stopped. Penn Yan is still flipped upside down BUT they are in a solid state just to repair and recover. We were joking  around that if it keeps raining, we are going to build an Ark.

That leads us to Sunday. Church was great! A bunch of returned missionaries and college students are back from school/missions. They are excited to go on splits and help with the work. Seems like solid referrals and work should start happening. We took Denzel to the sites afterwards with a big group. The sisters had their investigators as well. Plus a couple of members. He seemed to like it. I am pretty sure He is skitzophrenic (however you spell it) so he enjoyed it but didn't really take too much to the spiritual side. We also had to give a ride to two of the members because we can't drive investigators to the sites. That was awkward. We were definitely chaperoning. And they're like 40. They announced to us they were official. It was awkward.

Well... It's a new transfer. I'm going onto my 8th transfer, 7th companion, 4th area. Yep. I'm getting transferred again. I'm heading off to Kodak Park (Rochester City) to be with a Elder Ipson. Rumor is he is a decent worker. I knew this was going to happen because the work here in Canandaigua is so going to pick up this transfer.

Mom jinxed me. She said she didn't want me to get transferred and transferred to Rochester. Both happened. Haha so no more guessing for her!