Wilma Visited

First off, this is the second time I am putting captions with these pictures. That's as in

GRRRRRRRRRR! I'm so Mad!

No one should have to rewrite clever comments that they can no longer remember.

I guess the good news is that the pictures are all still here. Elder Merrell and I have worked out a system. He loads the pictures and I write the captions. If I'd have lost his pictures, it would not have been pretty. He might have made me start loading them myself again which would have been sooooo much worse. I'm not sure whose guardian angel was at work on that one, but I'm pretty grateful.

That said, I will attempt to recreate the original 116 pages.

This past week, we experienced our first "almost cyclone" Wilma hit American Samoa and did quite a bit of damage. The tuna factory lost its roof which means a lot of jobs distrupted. Independent Samoa, which is where we live, got the remnants which still produced a lot of flooding. This is right in back of our apartment.

Here I am, just down from our apartment, wading in the water. It reminded me of my childhood visits to Grandma and Grandpa Shurtliff's when we got to play in the irrigation water.

These are the apartments that we first lived in on the mission compound. They were flooded. Luckily, we now are on higher ground.

This is the main road that runs past the temple.

We have been amazed at how much water the ground can hold here. Most of this water will be gone in a few hours. Until the next rainfall. Then it will be gone in a few hours again. The ground is made up of a lot of volcanic rock.

Here we are at the wharf. Look at those waves.

Again, this water will quickly seep into the ground in a short period of time. It sure doesn't do that in St. George or Vernal!

Notice the guy that is knee-deep in water. I'm pretty sure his house is flooded.

This is a road!

Here are a couple of videos of the rain coming down...We love it in Samoa!