WEEK 76 Storms-we are alive!!!

Wow what a crazy week!

 

So if you don't know there were two big storms that just hit the pacific islands. There was 2 storms, and on my mission I have never seen so much rain in my entire life. The first storm hit and we were all stuck in the house. The rain and winds were very strong. Shortly after, Elder Farner (another elder in the house) and I, wanted to go out in the huge storm to go see if we could help anyone. Everything was crazy flooded: streets, houses, stores, and basically everything. As we were biking through the storm the rain was pelting us in the face and we were getting blown around pretty good. It reminded me of The Other Side of Heaven movie. If the Wind was a little bit stronger it would have really caused some damage. Luckily only a few houses were destroyed from the powerful winds. Anyways, after helping as many people as we could (soaking and actually a little frigid) we got to this other village and there were so many houses flooded, washing straight up to my chest. Trash was floating everywhere and the water was so dirty. Ocean was all washed up and mixed with the rain water. Then we came to our investigators house (who all three were just baptized on Saturday and confirmed yesterday) and we see that they are floating on floaties, swimming, cleaning, and just having parties and laughing in their flooded houses. Absolutely nothing in this world or natural disaster can change these happy wonderful Kiribati people's precious attitudes in this life. Kiribati people just "enjoy life" no matter what this world gives them. Their minds aren't  distracted by worldly things and are so blessed. I love these people and learn life learning lessons every week, however, this was one of the most heart moving I believe. 

Also that night it was the kings tide and the sea level was insanely high and washed many things away on land. This was probably one of the roughest storms that Kiribati has ever had. 

Elder Farner and I brought many sand bags through deep waters to patch people's doors to try and stop the water.  While setting down one of the big heavy bags, I felt something crawling really fast on my arm. I looked and saw a huge centipede on my arm (those things bite hard) and quickly hit that thing off!

Two of the outer islands were hit really hard and I heard that a few people died. The church has been sending aid out to try and help. These two islands are not opened up for elders because there is only 1 religion out there, only Kiribati Protestant Church.

Anyways, this last week was wild.

Hope everyone still alive in America and marurung

Ma tangira,

Elder Bowen