Our first, and hopefully last, hurricane evacuation

I don't even remember who I've told what, so I'll post the whole thing from the time we left!

Friday and Saturday last week this storm was looking really scary. We decided to not take any chances, and spent a lot of the day on Saturday bringing everything in from outside and securing it in the garage, and loading our cars with as much as we could.

Late Saturday night, our parish issued a mandatory evacuation of the parish. We received pre-recorded calls from the mayor (at midnight) and the parish president (at 1:00 a.m. Sunday) telling us to evacuate.

Sunday morning we had the car loaded and ready to go, but waited around for an older man who wanted to travel with us but had dialysis. He called around noon to say that he was ready, and we arranged a place to meet him at 12:15.

We got to the designated place (our friend the Sass' house), and he never showed up! He doesn't have a cell phone, and we could not reach him at home. He is a native Spanish speaker, so Doug thought he may not have understood - so Doug went back to our house to see if he was there, and to this man's house, and to the church - and he was nowhere. Finally at 1:30 we just decided to leave without him and hope that he would make it.

Our caravan (my car, Doug's car, Sister Sass' car, and Brother Sass' car) took the backroads to Hattiesburg, and it was not bad at all. There were a few spots of slow traffic, but only at intersections. Other than that it was steady but moving traffic. What would normally take 1 1/2 hours took 2 1/2, but that was also with a potty break for the kids. It really wasn't bad at all.

We arrived at the church and were met by the host bishop. He helped us find a room (the high council room) and get everyone set up, then he asked Doug if he would be the presiding authority in the building, and oversee a Sacrament meeting and get the rest of the people settled (there were still 5-6 more that were to arrive that night).

After a few hours, we had a little Sacrament meeting. Doug conducted and the missionaries blessed and passed the Sacrament since they were still dressed in suits and everyone else was in "evacuation gear". After the Sacrament, we had a few testimonies and that was nice. Then everyone just kind of hung out for the rest of the night and got settled, and we waited for the storm to hit in the early morning hours of Monday.

We woke up Monday morning to find that the hurricane had weakened even further. It had come in just almost exactly where it had been predicted, but was moving faster than expected (which was good so that it didn't have time to sit and stew). I think it ended up making landfall about 8-10 hours before they had predicted it to.

Let me just interrupt really quickly to say something about the evacuation. I know some are questioning it, but I absolutely think it was the best thing. Very very dangerous conditions out there that could change at any minute. I think they absolutely did the right thing by telling people to get out.

Everyone's spirits were really good yesterday as the reports started coming in that the damage was not as bad as expected. I was frustrated because our radio only received Mississippi stations and it was hard to get local news. But my family was really good about keeping us updated by phone, and that helped.

The kids had a blast at the evacuation! They performed several plays and talent shows, told jokes, played games, and watched movies. Mostly they just ran around the church playing tag. There were the 4 Sass girls, my 3 girls, Emma Greene (a little older than Morgan) and Nathaniel Greene (Ashlyn's age). Poor Nathaniel was the only boy! Well, the Sass' have a little boy but he is kind of young to be hanging out with all the kids, although he did sometimes. But for the most part it was just Nathaniel chasing all the girls and then saying, "Come on girls, now you have to chase me!". They were having a great time.

Last night we had a family home evening - first with updates on the storm from what everyone had heard. Our bishop stayed in town, although his wife evacuated to the same place we did, and he called and gave us a good assessment of what the damage was. We were all thrilled to hear that it was very minimal. It sounds like the worst from anyone in our ward is some homes with water up to the doorsteps but not inside, and some wind damage but not severe. Sigh of relief from everyone. Then we had a family home evening lesson and treats (pie and ice cream) and then played games until about 10:00 when someone put in Monsters Inc. and the kids stayed up late watching the movie.

Today we heard the news that they did not want anyone back into the parish until Wednesday, so we decided to get out and do some stuff. We went to the stake center to use the internet (no internet in our building, the old stake center), then out to lunch at Wendy's. Hattiesburg got some pretty good storms out of this, but it was manageable.

This afternoon we saw another play by the kids, and then I went back to my room to read. I had also put together a 500 piece puzzle yesterday which was fun. While I was reading (about 4:30) Doug came in and said, "well, they just announced we can get back into the parish at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, but they won't turn anyone back if they come now, so some of us are just getting our cleaning assignments done and leaving." So I asked him if he thought our family should go or stay, and he said he thought go because so many others were (there had been a total of about 50-60 staying there). So he went to do our cleaning assignment, and I packed up and cleaned our room...and then...he came and told me he thought we should stay after all!! Arghh! I asked him why, and he said because a few people were going to stay and it was the elderly people who needed help getting their things packed up and loaded, and that pretty much all that would be left were single women and older people so he thought he should stay. Two of the older men who were there were very, very ill (not related to the storm). So, I said, "I think since we're already packed up, me and the girls will just go."

He agreed, and we packed up the car, had potty breaks, and were on the road by 5:30.

I drove through rain, sometimes pretty heavy and scary rain, and I said to myself, "We should have waited until morning!!", but I plugged on, made really good time, and we were home within 2 hours of leaving the building.

Our neighbor had texted us to say that things were fine here, and he was right! We had no damage other than a few tree limbs down. Our neighbors lost their fence gate. That's all I could see in our neighborhood at all. We have electricity, cable, phones, internet - everything is working just fine. Parts of town are still without power and sewer, but it seems like all is well in our neighborhood. We feel really blessed and grateful that we were spared.

Doug is planning to help the older folks in the morning, and I think everyone will come home together then. I'm glad we took two different cars because it's kind of nice to be home and think of sleeping in my own bed tonight! The airbed was not too bad, except that it kept losing air and Doug and I would both roll into the middle. Not that I don't like being close to Doug, but it was kind of one of those "I've fallen and I can't get up" things. I would try to move to the side and would roll right back into the middle. Next time we'll have to take another egg crate and sleep separately.

Now we are just watching Hannah, Ike, and Josephine stir out there, and hope that they leave people alone!!

Oh, I took a bunch of pictures, but left the camera in Doug's suitcase. So when he gets back I'll post some pictures.

Thanks everyone for your prayers and for keeping us informed when it was hard to get news about Lousiana!