Water and Fire

Thank you for your prayers as Hurricane Jimena draws closer. Some of you have emailed or commented asking if we are evacuating. While some are leaving their houses and heading to shelters, everyone is staying in town. We thank the Lord we are in a solid cement house and we've raised our property level by bringing in 12 dump trucks full of dirt over the past couple years (those of you who have been reading here for a while may remember us moving dirt A LOT :) ). The town is getting prepared for the winds and flooding. We went to the market last night to stock up on food; the shelves were clearing out as everyone else was doing the same.
We ask prayers especially for those of our church. Many live in lower areas that are subject to flooding. There are several very poor areas around too where the houses are made of cardboard, blankets, wooden pallets etc... They are opening up shelters around town where the ground is higher. We pray that we may be able to be of help and a blessing to others in any way we are able.
The hurricane is due to hit land early tomorrow morning and cross over our area later Wednesday afternoon/evening.
Daniel is out in Jesus Maria today. Pray for the people there as well as the flooding can be bad in that area. Last week, Daniel was sharing the gospel with a lady who lost her house in the flood we had last year.

While we wait for the water to come, we had a little fire. This morning, the children were sitting at their desks working on school and I was on the couch having my teaching time with Benjamin while holding little Samuel. Eliseo was still napping in the back room and the younger children were playing under the patio with sidewalk chalk.
Suddenly the room filled with smoke and we heard lots of popping sounds. I looked over in the play room and saw the fan smoking. I jumped up and realized the love seat was smoking as well.
I handed Samuel to Timothy and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen. Elijah pulled the love seat back from the wall; the cord of the fan as well as the back of the love seat were on fire. I told the children to quickly get to the back yard and we thank the Lord that the fire was easily put out by the fire extinguisher.

Since the house was quite smokey and everything was covered with fine white powder, I had the Beka play with the children outside while Timothy, Elijah, Benjamin and I opened windows, cleaned up the mess and made some sandwhiches for lunch.
We thank the Lord that nobody was hurt, the fire was put out quickly and since only the back of the couch burnt, you wouldn't even know to look at it that anything happened :)