Today Hal and I had to be at the hospital @ 6:40 A.M. for my last round of MRIs. I finished up around 8:30 A.M. and then went over to the Cancer Clinic for my PET scan. The technicians took me to a semi truck, which was parked behind the clinic, sat me in a recliner, gave me an injection of dye, had me drink a "Banana Smoothie", which upon closer inspection was baryium (did they think I would not notice?), dimmed the lights, and told me to sit in the chair for 45 minutes and "not think" (while you may think that would be easy for me to do...it really wasn't). Apparently they want the dye spread evenly throughout the body and brain activity makes it concentrate too much in the brain. Very interesting. It is a very good thing that while I was "not thinking" I did not know that my home was flooding. After the 45 minutes I got to drink another of those yummy smoothies and then they put me in a machine that was exactly like an.....(wait for it)..... MRI machine (how cruel is that?). So, for the fourth time in a week, I got to be wrapped up, stuffed into a "straw", and told not to move. Fortunatly the PET scan machine was a little larger than the MRI machine and I was only in there for 30 minutes, instead of 70. When I was finished with the PET scan, I walked to the waiting room to see a husband who looked like he had been hit by a Mack truck. My first thought was that something had happened to one of the children, so I rushed up and demanded to know what had happened. He just looked at me with a completely defeated expression and said, "Our house has flooded." "Of course it did," was all I could say (but what ran through my mind were Melanie's words... "Heavenly Father, you are ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS!")
From Melanie:
Hal and Leslie and I were sitting around last night talking about how awesome their ward is and how blessed they are to live by and associate with such righteous people. I commented how lucky we are to know amazing people. Well, I saw the Gospel at its best today. I stayed over night at their house last night to stay with the kids today while Leslie went in for her final tests. They said goodbye to me about 6:30 a.m. Shortly thereafter I heard what I thought was the shower turning on. I listened for a minute and thought it might be the sprinkler running. I could hear water. I was in the basement on the futon. I laid there for several minutes trying to figure out what was going on. I finally decided I needed to investigate. I sat up to get out of bed. As soon as I put my feet on the floor they were covered with water. Hal and Leslie have black curtains on their downstairs windows so I couldn't see very well. I sloshed over and turned on the lights.
Water was pouring in through the window. I lifted up the curtain, the window well was completely full of water. Muddy water was coming in in buckets onto the floor. I was frozen. I felt so stupid, I didn't know what to do. I don't know very many people in Logan. I said a little prayer and got the answer to call my sister Stephanie because she knew the phone numbers of Hal and Leslie's Bishop and Relief Society President. I was somewhat in shock so I am kind of amazed that Stephanie was even able to follow what I was saying. I explained what was happening. She said she would make some calls. All of the time I talking on the phone I was trying to catch the water flooding through the window with a big pan and dumping it into the sink. I called Terry and explained the situation to him. He offered to come and help me. He woke Jordan and Victoria up and they were all getting ready to drive to Logan from Pocatello. Terry called my friend Ann because her son Creighton Lewis lives in Logan. Terry and Jordan and Victoria decided not to come because there was so much great help.
After I dumped 17 pans full of water I decided that I needed to try to stop the water from the source. I ran outside. It was pouring rain. I almost fell running across the cement in their backyard because it was covered with several inches of mud and water. I ran around the side of the house. The water was coming down the mountain in the back of their house and draining directly into their basement. At first I tried to empty the window well but it was coming in too fast. So, I went to the huge puddle next to the window well and started throwing buckets of water away from the house. I was about knee deep in water. The water was coming in faster then I could bale it out. I truly felt very hopeless. About 20 minutes later their neighbor Brandon Jensen (the Elder's Quorum President) came the rescue. He looked at the situation and asked if we had a shovel. Of course, I had no idea. He ran home and got one. He dug a trench around the window well to divert the water. Wish I had thought of that. He then went to investigate where all of the water was coming from.
Apparently the Power Company is suppose to have a culvert that will catch the flood water but there wasn't one so the run-off from the storm was running right through their backyard and into their basement. A few minutes later some of the other members of their ward showed up. I was so impressed with how well they worked together to handle the whole situation. The Relief Society President Connie came with Karen. Karen's house had recently flooded and she knew exactly what to do. She assigned people to the water vacuums, others to move furniture, others to squeegee out the halls other to pull up the carpet. The family room was completely saturated and had gone through Carson's room and into the bathroom. The laundry room was completely flooded. All of the children were asleep upstairs and missed all of the excitement.
The whole Frandsen family showed up to help. Bishop Baggaley was there figuring out how to get the restoration people there. Rich Littlewood, Eric Durrant and boys, Will Francis and his son Michael and Clay Rawlins It was an amazing thing to watch. Creighton Lewis came and immediately grabbed one of the shop vacs and got to work. There was a crew working outside and a crew working inside. Everyone worked so hard. When I hear about terrible things happening in the world and then I watch this kind of miracle happen it restores my faith in humanity.
We pulled out all of the carpet and the pad underneath. It actually looked pretty good by the time Hal and Leslie got home. It was a shock to them to see their carpet draped across their fence and their furniture in their garage but they were immediately grateful for the amazing help they received. They teared up as I told them of the people who came so willingly and just rolled up their sleeves and saved them thousands of dollars of basement repairs. I want to offer a personal thank you to those amazing people who just showed up to help. You are truly Christlike people. By-the-way the kids finally woke up about 10:00 because they couldn't figure out why there were so many cars at their house.
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