Lightning Strikes

Improvising during the power outage from the storm!

The hill they climb up each week to go to church...

The view down the path while going to church.

Hello Family!

I have some fun stories to tell today. But I'll start by saying that this week was, once again, FAST. 

Wow.

It really feels like I was just here at the computer telling you about last week. Just thought I'd say that. Ok, now for the fun story, starting this last Saturday night.

We got home at around 8:20 PM after another full day of walking over hill and dale while teaching the everlasting gospel of peace, and closed our day as usual and planned for the following day. During our planning our district leader texted us and asked if we were doing alright since there was apparently a really bad storm where they were at and raining super hard (down the mountain in Dian-ay a ways away from us) and they wanted to give us a heads up. At the time it had only just barely started to rain mildly (for the Philippines) and we didn't think much of it. So we finished our planning and continued with our night.

We then went on to cook our dinner, only to find out that our gas stove had just ran out of gas, which wouldn't be a problem except that right after we found out we had no gas our power went out. Leaving us with almost cooked rice in our rice cooker (luckily we had started the rice before we planned) and not many options with what to do to cook our canned beef loaf to eat with our rice (we're on a pretty poor eating budget).

We then, using what I had left of my eagle scout skills, fashioned a very ghetto stove out of two candles and a tin pan that goes inside the electric toaster as a skillet on top of the rice cooker and toaster oven (pictures attached). And we now have a hot meal! We were quite please with our ingenuity.

But! While we were thus rejoicing we were taken quite unawares by having a strike of lightning hit a tree literally right outside our window, which is arguable one of the scariest things I've experienced yet.

The huge storm that our district leader warned hit, being the reason for the early power outage, and bringing with it the craziest lightning storm I have ever experienced.

The next 30 minutes were what I would compare to what someone might feel in a war zone being pelted with mortars. Every other second there was a lightning from as close as to 200 to 300 meters away up to right next to our house.
It was a long 30 minutes. But we made it through alive!

Now Colonia Divina has been without power for the last three days and we are still out of gas. What used to be mostly camping has now turned to all the way camping for me.

Is this life experience or what? :)

That's all I have time for today, but I hope you enjoy the pictures and the story. Sorry it's not so much on the spiritual side this week.

I love you all!

~Elder Butler