"I found another drip!" I hollered to my dad as I examined the water dripping onto the floor with my flashlight.
My dad shook his head as he scrounged around the kitchen for another pot. "Every time I turn around, there's another leak!"
We were in another Typhoon with no electricity, and water was seeping through our ceiling. This typhoon wasn't as strong as the previous one, yet for some reason our house was leaking water everywhere! We had an assortment of pots, pans, towels, and rags all over the floor.
"Maybe you should go up to the apartment above and see what's happening." my mom suggested.
The wind subsided for a moment, my dad quickly ran upstairs. Even though the wind wasn't too strong, we all still prayed that he'd be safe as he went upstairs to talk to our neighbors.
Finally, he stepped in the door. "They're not home."
"No wonder our house is leaking everywhere. They probably have a window open letting all the water in their apartment." my mom sighed as we all sat on the couch in the living room. We were at a loss of what to do.
I flashed my light around the room, staring at the many brown streaks of water, the puddles everywhere, and the ceiling in the dining room. We were all starting to get quite worried about it. The ceiling was starting to droop and water was almost pouring out of it. It look like it could collapse at any moment.
Finally, my parents broke the silence.
"Well, you girls can probably go to bed. We're going to have to get up on the hour to empty all these pots and trash bins so our house doesn't completely flood."
We said another prayer together, then tried to get some sleep.
Being a light sleeper, knowing that the ceiling could collapse, and random drops of water on my face made it very difficult to sleep.
"Just keep us safe, Lord." I prayed.
It was a crazy night. I woke up many times during the night. Once I woke up to a huge 'CRASH!' I stepped over the small lake forming in front of my door to find out what had happened.
"The Chandelier fell and broke." my dad explained. He was sweeping the glass up. I noticed that the ceiling was lower, and there were even more drips and leaks everywhere.
Finally, morning came bringing the beautiful sunlight. We thanked God for keeping us safe and that the ceiling hadn't collapsed on us. The typhoon was gone! The sun was out! But our house was flooded...
My mom walked over to school in the morning and recruited some help. We didn't know what to do. We were worried about water damage and we knew we needed to pack our stuff. But where would we stay? Would we permanently move out?
The owner of the apartment above us came and found his whole floor covered in about 2-3 inches of water, which explained our situation. His and our apartments were the only ones damaged though.
The school found us a hotel so we packed some stuff and moved into the hotel and stayed in it for about a week.
The owner of our house came to look at it and talked with us.
"Yes, yes, this needs to be fixed. But this is not too bad, and we can just paint over this..." she said as she observed our home.
We knew that it was not safe to live in anymore, especially since our landlord didn't want to even make all the necessary repairs. So, we had less than a week to find a house.
What a crazy week it was! We all had to still go to school on top of trying to find a house, and packing our stuff at our old apartment.
Towards the end of the week, my dad found this super nice, big apartment that was owned by a former staff of our school.
I don't know why, but I just had this distinct feeling that it was all going to work out and that God would give us this apartment.
So, Saturday night we went to look at it. It was huge, beautiful, and in the perfect location! Long story short, the land-owner was super kind and generous, loaned us furniture from her own storage, and we were moving in four days later!
No one else that we knew were really affected by the typhoon, so why were we the unlucky ones to have our house flood? Well, maybe God just wanted us to move so we could have a nicer, bigger house closer to the city. Now we can do more outreach activities in our home. Plus, God taught me something. Many times when bad things happen to us in life, we are tempted to get all upset, blame God, and get all stressed out. But, God is in charge and He can handle anything. We weren't too stressed because we knew God was in control and he would work everything out for good, and He did!
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according too his purpose
ReplyDeleteRomans 8:28
:)