Week 47 Hurricane Matthew

Hello Family!

This has been quite an amazing week. Our investigator, passed his baptismal interview so we will be holding his baptismal service on Saturday!.. Assuming there isn't any flooding to prevent it. We are just grateful that we were able to get him interviewed before all of the major flooding. 

Hurricane Mathew has made quite an impact here in Kinston.  We stayed the night with a ward family.   The entire time I felt like I was in the canyons of Lake Powell waiting out a storm. Only this time I wasn't helping Dad man the ropes and boats and the ground wasn't rocking. I just quietly waited inside for something to happen and for someone to direct me to fix something, but nothing could be done. There was nothing to stress my mind, nothing to watch over.

Yesterday morning we did service trackting to help people in the neighborhood. It was amazing to see how many trees had fallen and how many power-lines were strung out all over the road. There was one man we helped, who initially said he didn't need any help, carry out about a 5ft pile of limbs and sticks from his yard. 

We have been rendering service All day yesterday and will continue doing primarily service throughout the week. We are doing our best to manage all the requests for help. We helped a local store move ALL of its furniture to its second story. Needless to say, we are exhausted. There are a couple members who were flooded out that we will be visiting today to see if we can render any service there. I know that there are many other members in need of help. Our apartments are fine. The Kinston Spanish Apartments still do not have power so they are staying with us (Kinston English) because we live a stones through away and we have power.

Every time we visit a place we can see an increase in the water level. I have heard that the water is supposed to be about 4 ft higher than hurricane Floyd. That is almost literally going to turn Kinston into an island. All of the roads will be closing. We loaded up at Walmart today so between members and our mini food storage, we will have plenty of food.

I love yall,

-Elder Shill