Rain, ruin and rejoicing

We have finally gotten rain. If I were to guess I would say that we got three inches at the farm yesterday. The only caveat to really enjoying the rain is that when the storm started a microburst tore off part of the porch roof on the apartment and in doing so ripped open a portion of the roof over the apartment.

Mama woke me about 3:30 a.m. Monday morning because there was a two by four knocking against the glass door on the front of our apartment. I had to go outside in the driving rain and bend the bracket holding it to the apartment wall back and forth until it broke free. I was thoroughly soaked in the process – and I nearly broke one toe on my left foot when I tripped and fell in the sloppy mud outside our front door. I was really disturbed by the roof panel that the porch roof had pealed back on the roof over the apartment. It was too dark to tell how bad the damage was but I knew it could be really bad.

I got out of my sopping pajamas and started mopping up the water now coming into the apartment through the ceiling and began to pray that the Lord would ease up the rain so we could hopefully minimize the damage to the apartment. It was a little less than an hour later that the rain let up. By that time Mama and I had wrung our twelve to fifteen gallons of water off the floor of the apartment – one soaked dishtowel at a time.

When it was light enough I finally got to look at the damage to the roof and it was not as bad as I had originally thought. Only one roofing panel had been torn back. About ten feet up on the damaged panel one screw had held the panel from ripping further. Oddly enough, only one screw held the porch roof – which was flipped upside down on the apartment roof - to the damaged roofing panel; one screw.

I got out in the rain and managed to get the lone screw free from the panel and kicked the porch roof off of the apartment roof and onto the ground. I was able to get the panel back in place and fastened down in order to minimize the overall impact to the apartment. All this happened before 6 a.m.

When I knew the roof was sealed as well as possible I pulled the wet insulation out of the ceiling to allow the sheetrock to dry. Mama and I bagged it up and put the six bags in the dumpster. Later this week I will access the sheetrock and see if it needs to be replaced. That is my biggest concern – mainly because I am not good at those types of repairs. For now it looks like the damage was far less than it could have been. We can rejoice in that.

Completely unrelated to what we have been through the past twenty four hours, Mama and I are once again looking to sell the farm and move closer to the church. We found one home on twelve acres that might actually be worth sacrificing the farm for. The one drawback to finding anything we like right now is that it may be challenging – if not impossible – to sell the farm. But we will try and see how much God is in it.

As in times past when we have seriously considered moving we will continue to work on the projects we have laid out at the farm until the Lord really opens the door for us to do otherwise. Either way we are content.