Hey everyone!
Such a crazy week this last week, I´m still in shock, it feels like the world just ended and only the city of Brusque is aware of it haha. So this week we had a lot of rain but nothing like too crazy. Anyways, the river that runs thru our city gradually started to get more and more full to the point where it covered a couple of roads but it seemed like that was gonna be it. We and everyone else in the city were taking pictures because of the overflow. About an hour later we saw a member of our branch and he told us to go home immediately and stay there because the whole city was gonna flood. We still had a lot more work to do and quite honestly we didn´t think anything would happen so we just kept on working for the rest of the day. We get back at night and the river has flooded the bridge and a few streets right by our house so we had to hike thru all the mud and knee high water to get home, but we eventually got home and our street was totally fine and we thought there was absolutely no way that the flood would get us. So we are asleep and at 1:30 in the morning our door bell starts ringing like crazy and people are banging on the door. So we answer it and it was our neighbor who lives right above us (a member) and he is in a panic and tells us to get our stuff as fast as possible and get upstairs into his house because the flood was here. So we rush and get our essentials and place our suitcases higher up so that they would get wet and we finally step outside our house and just see like a tiny pool of water in the street and we were like ´seriously? He just woke us up for this?´ but we agreed to go and spend the rest of the night in his house just to make him happy (there were actually 2 other evacuated families there too). So we go back to sleep and when we wake up in the morning we look outside the window and our street is flooded about 3 feet deep and the water was rising by the minute!! We were just in shock and watched the water continue to rise for the next 4 hours and watch house after house and car after car just get covered by mud and water. People in rescue boats were going around the entire day passing out water/food and one of them even sunk. Some people didn´t make it out of their houses and even died. Others had crawled into their attics )like entire families) and had to spend the night there. The flood water was full of snakes and frogs and dressers, pots, etc...it was absolutely crazy, such a surreal feeling. Finally at 5pm that night the water went down enough to where we could make it back to our house. Our entire front yard was covered by about 6 inches of mud and we had a water line on our house of a little more than 3 feet high. We then treck our way to our front door, open it and just find everything covered in mud, it was such a mess. The water inside our house also got up to about 3 feet high and that was really good compared to some of our neighbors, some of them had water lines as high as 10 feet!! We spent all day Saturday cleaning, it took forever and we still haven´t gotten all the mud but we got the majority of it. A member from the Church and 2 of our investigators showed up at our house around noon and helped us clean up too, it was super nice of them but we had to throw away 3 dressers and a bunch of other stuff. My suitcases got hit too and my Journal from every day of my first 6 months of my mission was completely wet, total bust. Our clothes and whatnot got hit pretty hard too and most of our shoes are pretty much done with. We had to clean up as fast as possible tho because our the situations of our neighbors were much worse than ours. Several of them literally lost everything and they were so dejected and crying, it was super sad. We spent the rest of the day and night helping them out tho. Then the next day was Sunday and we only had Sacrament meeting and the it was amazing!! There were a few families who were there who had lost everything and the meeting was exactly what they needed, the Spirit was so strong and everyone was crying and comforting each other. After chruch we just went back to work on the clean effort, we really couldn´t just go out and do our normal work, the city was basically destroyed. All of the city went under water too, like most of the businesses are closed still because they got really hard. It has been really cool to see everyone team up tho and work together and we have already had some great missionary opportunities because of it. It appears like we are going to have to just do clean up work for the majority of this next week too, but we are ready and excited to help. But don´t worry, we are doing great, and have food/water, all the essentials. Love you all so much and hope you have a great week and keep the city of Brusque in your prayers!! Give the kids some extra loves for me!!!
Love,
Elder Michael J. Neilson
