El Paso & Snow don't mix...

A couple of weeks ago on Facebook, I wished that Maryland & El Paso could switch weather for just one day.  To all my friends in El Paso, I sincerely apologize.

To it's credit, El Paso did look beautiful with it's blanket of snow...

However, El Paso doesn't get this kind of weather. Ever.  I was assured by several native El Pasoans yesterday that this was a once in a lifetime event.

Because this never happens, El Paso is missing several things we took for granted in Maryland...snowplows, salt trucks, electricity generators that don't freeze, and pipes that are insulated.

It is this last thing that caused us the most trouble over the weekend.  In fact it caused most people trouble over the weekend.  We went to our Young Marrieds group from church over the weekend, and every couple had been affected by burst pipes in some way.

Our story looks like this:

We had gone 3 days without hot water, and 2 days without heat at all in out apartment, so it was pretty chilly...the temperature in the apartment never rose above 50. 

Some evidences of God's grace...we were not supposed to be in the apartment the night the pipes broke.  Our great friends the Radunzels had offered to let us stay in their home since our heat wasn't working.  But mid-afternoon the heat kicked back on, so we opted to stay at our home that night.

When Alain came home from work that day, he saw that his wife was going stir crazy from being trapped in a cold house for 3 days, so he decided we would go to the PX for dinner and study time.  But when we got to the PX, we found that they were closing early due to electricity and water restrictions, so we got some Popeye's chicken and headed back home. 

We had just sat down to dinner, when Alain returned to the kitchen to get something.  He heard a loud sound, and called out for me to come into the kitchen.  I heard rushing water as soon as I came in, but we couldn't see where it was coming from.  All of a sudden Alain pointed upward, and we could see the lighting fixture above our sink filling with water.  

Alain took the lighting fixture off and water poured out.

Then it spread to the 2nd light fixture in the kitchen.  

Then to the lighting fixtures in the living room.  

Then to every crack and crevice it could find on our ceiling.

I felt like we were on the Titanic.  Water was coming from everywhere, and there seemed to be no place to go or move anything. 

I turned to Alain and said, in my panic, "Are we going to lose everything?"  He, being the more godly one, said, "Let's pray." 

After his prayer, I got on the phone with our apartment owner, who told us he would be right over but to go to our neighbor's house above us and ask him to turn off his water.  Unfortunately he wasn't home, so we focused on moving as much of our stuff out of the way as possible into the bedroom where it wasn't wet yet.  The apartment owner and a maintenance worker came in about 30 minutes to shut off the water and brought us a mop, bucket and a wet vac.  :-)

We cleaned up all of the water out of the kitchen, but it was apparent that the carpet was ruined and the ceiling was soaked, so we couldn't do anything about those.  At that point we were exhausted, so we packed up and spent the night at the Radunzels' home after all!

 The next morning we went back to the apartment, only to be greeted by water rushing from a burst pipe under our sink.  The kitchen, living & dining room were re-flooded, and this time the water had spread to our hallway and bedroom.  I called the property owner to let him know, and he said, "No ma'm, we fixed it all last night."  But I could see the water coming out from behind the sink, so I assured him that my husband was standing right beside me to confirm that I wasn't crazy, and that this was a new leak.  :-)

It soon was apparent that due to all of the water damage, we could not stay in this apartment.  Praise God, another apartment is opening up soon in our same complex, so we will be moving to that shortly.  As if to confirm it, as we were packing all of our stuff, another pipe burst, flooding our closet.

Until we can move, (we are waiting on the family currently in our new apt to move out) we are staying with the Radunzels (thank you Joel & Jill!) who have been amazing hosts.