The Great Flood of '19 (1/28/2019)

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Dear everyone,

So, our apartment flooded.

Let's start at the beginning.

On Saturday the 19th we received confirmation that church was canceled due to a bad incoming snowstorm. Now, the storm was already pretty bad before that so it wasn't a surprise.

What WAS a surprise was waking up the next morning to Elder Lewis distressed about something. I heard water flowing. I sat up in bed and saw the kitchen floor had about a half-inch of water all throughout it. It was 5 AM. Elder Lewis had woken up to use the bathroom and stepped on squishy, wet carpet. He turned on the light switch right as I woke up as well only to see water pouring out of the light fixture.

So we got buckets and tried to stop the leakage. We saw the bathroom had water all in it as well. The carpets were gradually getting soaked in nasty water. We called the apartment maintenance people and left a message. I was tired and kinda aggravated at my already-not-enough-hours-of-sleep being taken from me so I just went back to bed and Elder Lewis took care of some stuff while I napped. (Thanks Elder Lewis!!) But it wasn't too long a nap, because the apartment maintenance people called back and said they'd try to get somebody to come in but they might not be able to due to the fact that there's a foot of snow outside. We called the mission's housing coordinator and he said, among other things, to get out of there just in case the ceiling were to collapse.

So we called our Elder's Quorum president, Pres. Mathatas (since he's pretty much the nearest member to us) and he came and picked us up on his taun-taun, I mean in his car, and we snow-slid our way to his home still in our pajamas. We stayed with them for a bit, quite bewildered and bemused.

Long story short: that night we stayed with some other wonderful members, eventually found out that the third floor neighbor's water boiler had broke and been left on for many hours, we moved all our stuff the next day and the next, stayed in another missionary apartment the second night, and miraculously were able to move into another apartment on the other end of the complex by day 3. It took almost all of P-Day today to finish cleaning and organizing the apartment.

The whole ordeal was just nuts. We were pretty much not even missionaries anymore for 3 days. It's almost odd that things are back as they were now, only in a new apartment. The old one was completely trashed. It smelled like old, wet, gym socks. The carpets had been ripped up last we saw it. Thankfully not very much of our stuff got water damaged.

Trying to get this out quickly so I'm trying to think if I forgot anything... Oh yeah, Wednesday's weather is supposed to have a high of -2. Exciting.

Wish I could tell that story in more detail but I'm pretty sure I got all the essentials. Day 3 of the ordeal was probably the most I've ever used my forearms in a single day moving a big couch into the new apartment among tons of other stuff. (The arms were sore for several days after that.) We filled an entire dumpster and then some with stuff we threw out. That apartment needed some spring cleaning...

Well, on the spiritual side of things, I've been thinking a lot lately about what it really means to be a child of God. If I had time I'd write it now but I sadly do not. Maybe I'll write it in a future weekly, maybe it will be a Facebook post. We'll see.

Catch you on Wednesday next week (since it is transfers week!).

Love,
Elder Gallagher

PICS: Our snowed-in car on Day 2, the apartment on Day 1, and our temple trip from last Friday when I didn't send a weekly 😒.





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