I have been in Phoenix visiting my mom and 93 yr. old Grandmother and what an interesting time it was! I arrived in the early evening of May 31st on a flight from Houston that was a very pleasant ride! But early Sunday morning I awoke to hear my mom exclaiming "Oh No! What am I going to do?!" I rushed from my room and promptly stepped onto an extremely soggy, soaked carpet in the hallway. As I turned the corner there stood my mom trying to soak up water from the flooded kitchen floor with towels from the linen closet. Oh My! 3-4 inches of water covered the floor!! Poor Mom. She just kept saying she didn't know what she was going to do. I was almost feeling the same despair when God spoke to my heart and said "PRAY". So pray we did. Mom went to the garage to get the broom to sweep the water out the front door and I opened the phone book to look for someone to come and extract the water. There was just too much to try to soak up or sweep out. The first ad we saw was called "Helping Hand". We dialed the number but got no answer so we moved on to the next ad, but something directed us back to the first one, so we tried the number again. Thankfully someone answered. Once we shared our dilemma they said they would page someone (guess it was an answering service) Soon someone called us back and said they'd be here in an hour! An hour!!! Well one hour turned to two and then two and a half. We called at 6:30 a.m on a Sunday morning to a company that was an hour away from where my mom lived! They had to get someone out of bed for the call! Well this company has just been stellar as has the insurance company! God made sure we were taken care of completely. The most awesome thing about this whole affair was my mom had been greatly desiring new carpet (hers is 35 yrs. old) and freshly painted walls, but being 74 she could not do it herself (oh she's feisty enough) just not agile and didn't have the money to buy new carpet. Who would think that out of disaster would come blessing? But that is the Lord's way so very often. It has been a trying 3 weeks for Mom and Grams for sure. We had commercial wind tunnel fans (26) of them plus a huge dehumidifier in the kitchen for a solid week. The dishwasher and stove had to be removed so that cabinets could dry out. We had nothing to cook on except a George Foreman Grill and a little tiny electric frying pan. Oh we could have stayed in a hotel and eaten out but my Grams couldn't take all that. So we stayed and endured the noise and upheaval. I had to come back home without seeing the finished product but I did get to see the walls painted in her choice of colors! Very nice. Soon she will have new carpet (Sat. if all goes well) and then everything will be moved back into place. The ins. company was able to fix two curio cabinets and the Grandfather clock (the bottoms of each received quite a bit of water damage, but they were repairable). In the end my mother's house will feel brand new!

You know, seeing and living through this episode with my mom taught me a couple of things. 1.) you get further with people when you're gracious and patient (I know that's nothing new) but it sure did speak volumes to me 2.) We had a real peace because we knew God was taking care of us, so no matter the situation it is so vitally important to pray before acting even if you think you know what to do. Consult the Lord first, He may have a different solution. Case in point, I never usually go for the big ads in the yellow pages. They're just too obvious and I always think they're going to be too expensive. I mean, they have to pay for that big ad! But God doesn't go by my standards and he had us do something outside of normal operating procedure. 3.) Okay I know I said " a couple" but I saw once again how the Lord cares for even those unspoken wishes of our hearts. My mom would never pray for new carpet or new painted walls, but she sure did wish it. What Amazing Love!! Praise the Lord!

Oh I did take pictures of this whole thing and will be scrapping them soon. Right after I teach a Mosaic class, a board book class, an altered class...gotta run.

Happy Scrapping,