The Flood

Last Tuesday when I returned home from Pilates I noticed that our sprinklers had turned off a half an hour early.  I wondered about it, I even called Jeff and asked him if he turned them off and he said no, then rationalizing that the timer must have changed I entered the house.  As I was busy getting ready to leave for a hair appointment I had the thought to go downstairs and check to see if I could find out what happened to the sprinklers.  Unfortunately I dismissed the idea a couple of times and left.
Fast forward about 5 hours.  I'm now at the grocery store shopping when I get a frantic phone call from Jessi telling me that she had walked down the steps and there was water every where.  As I quickly went to check out she called to inform me that she and Amy had called Jeff and they had got the water shut off.  I felt much better about the situation, not even beginning to understand the extent of the water in our home.
As soon as I arrived home I noticed Jessi running from one neighbor to the next to get help to get our belongings out of the basement.  That is when reality began to set in.  I carried in the groceries and walked down the stairs.  To my utter amazement the water covered my feet as I stepped off the landing.
The girls said that it had gone down drastically since the water had been turned off.
My dear sweet neighbors, the priest quorum from our ward, and many others just driving by stopped to help.  We totally removed everything from our basement.  Every couch, table, bed, book, blanket, junk and more junk was carried out.  It is remarkable the amount of STUFF we had in that basement.  The water had spread so completely that there was not a room, closet or corner that had not been soaked.
The disaster team was called and responded so quickly.  They began removing the water as we were still removing furniture and items from our house.  They worked for hours and hours ripping up carpet pad, base boards, and vacuuming up water.  They have been remarkable.  Each day they come back to destroy more of the house as they find more water damage.  They cut 24 inches high of sheetrock around  the bottom of all the outside walls and removed wet insulation.  Another day they came and removed built in cupboards because there was water under them that they could not reach.  It has been overwhelming, but how grateful I am that they are thorough.  They have had giant fans running non stop in our basement for one week now.  The rebuilding of our basement will take lots of time but the damage has now stopped.  We can finally move forward.

 Unfortunately I didn't think to take pics during the flood.  I would love to document the amount of water we had and the number of people who came to help.  I was totally humbled by the willingness of others and I need to repent of having bad feelings about returning to our family ward.  The Lord needed to remind my of what an incredible place we do live.
These pictures are of the fans in our basement.  This is after they had removed 18 of them.  Notice in this first picture that the sheetrock has been cut away.

 We had to store most of our belongings in the garage while they were working in the basement.  Trying to empty the rooms quickly didn't make for nice packing.  Things were thrown into what ever container we could find.  We look like "one of those people"  you know- those hoarders that people whisper about.  We try to keep the garage door closed as much as possible.

So many times since the flood I have regretted that I didn't listen to those promptings to go and check out the sprinklers and see what was going on with them.  It turned out that one of the valves burst which is why my sprinklers stopped and the water began running into our home.  It is so difficult for me to determine whether thoughts are of my own or of the spirit.  I sometimes feel like when I think it is the spirit telling me something it is not and at times like this that I think I am just coming up with a thought  and it is the spirit talking to me.  Will I ever get it right?
Here is a great article on learning to listen to the spirit.