Week 33....The mission's ON FIRE (Literally)!!!

Burning down the house...

WOW!!!!! What a week this has been!

Our house caught on fire this week. What a crazy experience indeed.  Saturday night was a pretty cold night, so we loaded the stove here with a few big pieces of wood, just like we have been doing for the last couple weeks. Usually the wood just sits there and simmers and makes the house warmer. Well this night was weird; the whole house was so hot. All of us were sweating all night, but still we didn’t think anything of it.  

For those of you who know me... I am a really deep sleeper, so I just slept through everything. At around 5 o‘clock in the morning, our smoke detector went off. I stayed asleep... I didn’t ever hear the alarm. I woke up to one of my housemates, Elder Sauñe screaming FIRE, FIRE GRINGOS, WAKE UP THERE IS A FIRE. I still didn’t want to wake up. I thought he was just pulling a joke on us. He then opened the door and the whole room filled up with black smoke immediately. That is when I jumped up. I knew then that it was not a joke. We ran out of the room to the front part of the house. We looked and there was a huge fire in the front part of our house. More smoke than fire though. The smoke was really toxic and we couldn’t see or breathe. Elder Sauñe and I stayed in the house and tried to throw water on it. That didn’t work… It was too big. We were in there until we couldn’t breathe anymore. We both ran out of the house. At this point my companion and my other house mate had been trying to wake up the neighbors. Elder Sauñe grabbed the hose and handed it to me. I started to spray the fire from outside the house through the window. This is when the fire exploded. The whole front room was ablaze with fire. Our 1 hose was not doing anything. I couldn’t really get close either because it was too hot. Finally after about a few minutes, our neighbors woke up and brought over hoses and helped us with the fire. We had 3 hoses going to try and put out the fire. We sat there and fought this fire for a good 10 minutes. Luckily, one of our neighbors had been trained to be a fire fighter. This kid was amazing. When we got the fire down to where we could enter the house, this kid took my hose and went in like a super hero with two hoses and kicks in the door and starts spraying the fire. This kid is my hero. It was such a crazy experience. After about 20 minutes the fire fighters got there, and they helped put out the fire in the roof. We finally got the fire out after about a good 20 to 25 minutes. It was such a crazy experience, but we are so grateful to be alive. We know God was watching over us in our time of need. 

The rest of this week we have spent tearing the whole house apart getting it gutted of all the burnt stuff and getting it to the point where they can come in and rebuild the house. It has been a real fun, but stressful week. I thank you all for all your love and support and all of your prayers. We are really feeling all of your prayers here in this sector. Thank you all so much!

Elder Miller on demolition

So thankful for the service of other missionaries....Elder Clarke to the rescue!

I was able to salvage my most prized possession...My scriptures!!
The pages are soot-stained, but whenever I read them I will never forget the miracle that we experienced!!