My next post has to do with my second area, Miami, Oklahoma.
The first thing you learn about Miami upon arrival there is that it's not pronounced like Miami, Florida. It's "My-am-uh"- it's how the Miami Indians pronounce it and how the town in Florida would be pronounced if the Indians still lived there. The town's biggest claims to fame are Route 66 and the Coleman Theater. The town has some of the longest stretches of the original Route 66 nearby, along with some famous landmarks. The Coleman theater is a 1920's movie palace that was built by local mining magnate (man, I can't remember his first name!) Coleman. According to Larry Irwin, one of the tour guides there, it is haunted, but I believe that about as much as I beleive we faked the whole darn Apollo program (No, the moon landing was not faked!). Larry's a nice guy who, despite not being a Mormon or accepting the Mormon doctrine, is great friends with the missionaries. He'd always take us out to eat at Hungry Henry's or some other place.
My first companion in Miami was Elder Hochstrasser (Hockanstrasser? Schlotzstrasser? Hochenschlasser?-- as Larry would call him). He'd been out a little more than a year (I think- I know he didn't hit his year mark with me) and was worlds different from Elders Davis or Bailey. He was a little more... lax on the discipline than either of them. While there I got the opportunity to witness the baptism of MG, an awesome guy who'd moved from Kenya 5 or 6 years previous, and Patrick, a pretty amazing teenager. Other than those two, however, we never had a whole lot of success in the missionary work there. About three weeks before I left we were introduced to a young lady named Kasha. She was actively searching out God's will, and one of the most awesome members from our ward there introduced her to the church. I don't know if she ever got baptized.
So, about the ward. Just like Lebanon, Miami is a small town of ~13,000 with several smaller outlying communities. The Bishop again lived about 30 minutes out of town, and there were only a handful of members from Miami proper. I remember two families especially well. The Gibsons were perhaps the best family we could have asked for at the time. They were always willing to help, always willing to spread the gospel (Sister Gibson is the one who introduced Kasha), and a blast to be with. Brother Gibson is the IT guy and head wrestling coach at the local high school. He was in Elder Bednar's old stake and had nothing but good to say about him. He was a great help to us and the city during the flood (more on that later). They had 4 kids; 2 in college, one in high school, and another in elementary. The Comptons were a younger family; Brother Compton taught music at North-Eastern Oklahoma A&M college (NEO), just down the street from our house (yes, the Elders in Miami have a house), and Sister Compton taught at the elementary school where their young son went to school. They were always willing to help as well, and Brother Compton would often drive us to Neosho, MO when we had district meetings.
So, in Lebanon we had an ice storm. In Miami, we had a flood. Miami is bordered on the south-west by the mighty Neosho river, and the highly-polluted Tar creek runs through the east part of town and joins the Neosho on the southern edge of town. Our house was a couple streets away from Tar creek, and NEO's practice field bordered it. After a week of massive rains to our north, the Neosho rose to a really high level- I think it was 30 feet above normal when it crested on the 4th. On Monday, July 2nd we'd had a zone outing in Joplin playing Ultimate Frisbee with the rest of the missionaries in the zone (during which I managed to tweak my ankle). Elder Jackson (my second companion and a really great guy. He just had two transfers left when he was assigned to Miami) and I arrived home to find a message on our answering machine from Larry asking if we had evacuated yet. We were like "What?!" We called him and he told us that the Neosho was going to flood big time. After talking with city officials and others we determined that our house might get flooded, so we called Brother Gibson and asked if we could stay at his place. He and his family were very generous in allowing us to stay there for two nights until the flood crested. The water barely touched the property line of our house and it was never in danger of flooding.
That week became an 'Ox in the mire' situation, especially Monday and Tuesday. Brother Gibson, Elder Jackson, and I volunteered our services to anyone who needed help moving stuff out of their house or out of their basement (Miami had a few more basements than Lebanon, where I only saw one- at the Ritchell's). Monday night we were out until 11:30 helping an old lady very close to the river get practically everything out of her house- including an old 1960's era fridge with a heavier-than-lead condenser. By the end of that night I had a nasty sunburn from our Zone outing, a tweaked ankle exacerbated by all the heavy lifting. Elder Jackson nearly fainted from exhaustion, and Brother Gibson was really pushing himself for a guy who'd had a health scare a month earlier. We talked with our District Leader and President Seal and got permission to 'bend' some of the rules due to the emergency- we didn't really proselyte, we did (way) more than the recommended 4 hours of service/week, we didn't get in til late those first two or three days, etc. We were also pretty bad at getting up on time- we were too exhausted. I can't even remember how many different people we helped move stuff out of their houses that week.
After the river crested and started to fall came the massive task of clean up. One of the families in the ward lived in a low-laying area south of the Neosho, and the entire first floor of their house was flooded. Luckily for them, their house was built with cement walls and floors, so we just had to scrub the house down rather than write it off. One day I remember in particular. We had recieved a call from the city to help somebody move some stuff out of their now-mostly-dry basement. It turned out most of it was old desks and file cabinets from the 70's- lots of heavy steel desks. We had to get them out via a steep, narrow staircase that had a nasty 90 degree corner halfway up. We were all pretty tired after that, but then his neighbor asked us for some help. He had 4 rolls of housing insulation in his unfinished basement that were now ruined and he had to get them to the street. First we had to lift them 4 feet to a crawlspace, drag them 10 feet, then lift them up another foot and a half through a crawlspace entrance to the driveway. Problem was, they were water logged. They each probably weighed 400-600 pounds, and whenever you tried to put your arms under them you would get soaked and you risked tearing the paper covering the insulation. We went in dry; when we came out, we were drenched head to toe. There was not one dry part on our bodies. After that we were really, really tired and called it a day (it was getting late anyway).
One of the brothers in the ward, a member of the Stake High Council, happened to have the week off from work and got involved with the cleanup. He called Salt Lake, and they sent out a bunch of clean up kits, a couple shop vacs and generators, and some hygiene kits. It was cool to see this giant semi pull up to the First Christian Church (where the Red Cross had set up their shelter and were using as a base of operations) with the beehive on the side of the trailer and the words "Deseret Transportation" on the side. The church sent another shipment a couple days later with more shop vacs, fans, generators, and cleaning kits. The Red Cross offered water and hot meals to everyone who needed them. It was neat to see all the different churches come together- we had Southern Baptists from other states come in to help, and we all worked side-by-side.
We spent several days taking destroyed furniture and stuff out to the street from peoples homes; it was devastating to see all that so many people had lost. One house was picked up off it's foundations and moved about a foot. FEMA came in and brought some trailers for those who's homes were to be condemned. There was a lot of nasty stuff in the water. Remember Tar Creek? Yeah, it's a SuperFund site. A total of around 600 homes were affected, and the last estimate I heard before I left was that 300 would be condemned. Half the buildings at NEO had rather severe water damage. The municipal pool, where Sister Gibson and a couple others from the ward worked, was closed for the rest of the season and they said it would probably be closed for the next season (this upcoming summer of 2008). One old, established store (Nott's Grocery) was pretty much wiped out of business, as was the city's newest fire station.
The week following the flood week (ie, the week after the 4th of July) we tried to get back to normal, missionary-work wise. That week I received the news that I would be transferred to the Indian Springs area in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma (a suburb of Tulsa). Elder Davis had served there, Elder Jackson had just come from there, and that same transfer Elder Hochstrasser would become the district leader of that district. The following week was transfer week. Starting Sunday (the 15th) I got rather sick- stomach pains and the associated nastiness. I barely survived district meeting that week, spending most of it on the floor. Wed I basically took a sick day; as the evening wore on, the pains began to become really, really bad. After consulting with Sister Seal (who was in charge of missionary health) it was decided I'd better go to the hospital. After giving me a blessing, Brother Gibson took me into the ER. They put an IV in me and started a saline solution while they did some tests. Fortunately, I just had some sort of bug and not a burst appendix, which would've been really bad news (as one of my friends is finding out first-hand this week). I drained that first bag of saline solution in about 20 minutes, and that really helped me feel better. After about 2 and a half hours I was back in (relatively) stable condition, so we went home. Throughout it all Brother Gibson was a Godsend, a real father figure. He's also the type who knows how to crack a joke at just the right time, so I'd be doubled over in pain but laughing at the same time. I don't know what I'd have done those two weeks without the Gibsons.
Luckily, by Friday (transfer day) my stomach had settled down and I didn't have to run to the bathroom every hour. I say luckily because it was a three hour drive to Broken Arrow. Thus started the last (and probably hardest) portion of my mission, which I'll write about another day.
