Hurricane Henriette

Monday Morning we packed up a couple of suitcases, grapped our pillows and blankets, loaded up our ice chest and electric skillet and headed 5 hours south to the American Consulate in Los Cabos to pick up Nehemiah's American Passport and Born Abroad Certificate. The trip down was hot and only the front 2 van windows open fully. As we traveled further south, the skies began to darken and the children began to pray for some rain to cool things down. By the time we reached our destination, the sky looked quite gloomy and as we checked into our motel, we were informed that a hurricane was due to hit land in a matter of hours! How did we miss that? Normally the US Consulate sends us an email of any hurricanes in our area. Daniel had checked the news a day before we left, but only read about Hurricane Felix which was not in our area.

The Locals began boarding up and taping windows and we soon realized that the American Consulate would probably not be open until the storm was over anyways. The next morning the rain was pouring and the winds were howling. There were 2 stores open in town...everything else was shut down. We loaded the children into the van and drove to the Sorianna (like a K-mart/grocercy store). I think the whole town was there. The lines were over an hour long. Daniel looked at me and said, "Do we even want to bother?" I said, "Well,we need to eat something today and I can't think of anything better to do. :)" So we picked up some things to make stew in our skillet and some sandwhich things too in case we lost power. We found some bouncy balls, crayons, paper, and clay we bought to keep the children occupied as we would be in our hotel room for the duration of the storm.

When we got back and did what all the other locals did...watched and waited. By the next day, it was still raining, but much calmer. We were able to pick up Nehemiah's paperwork the next morning and began the journey home. The hurricane had gone north up the peninsula during the night and we were unsure what kind of road conditions to expect, but since we had no clean clothes, no more food, and couldn't just rent motel rooms indefinately, we decided to head home.

Thank the Lord for a big, strong, tall van and a very skilled driver (my hubby :) ) ...that and the Lord's gracious hand of protection over us....we were able to make the 5 hour trip in just 10 hours. We had to cross 13 rivers that were running over the highway and some interesting detours. The road had been completely torn up and washed away in numerous places. Houses and cars were destroyed, but as far as we were told, nobody was hurt. Please keep these people in your prayers as they begin to rebuild their homes, roads and towns. We thank the Lord for his merciful hand of protection.