Friday, June 15, 2012

Little Bear Fire: Part III

June 10th

The next morning Ben, Stephanie, Mannie and Tom left early to practice music at Church Street Church of the Nazarene. Korey and Lauren took their time getting ready, and stopped at McDonalds for breakfast before also heading to church.

Church was also a somber experience for us. There was a spaghetti dinner planned for after the service, but none of us felt like eating or talking to anyone. We decided to go to walmart instead and grab a few items we were missing like deodorant.

By the time we finished walking around walmart, Ben and Stephanie were pretty hungry so we went to the Subway in walmart so they could get a sandwich. While we were sitting in the Walmart Subway, Danielle Pape called. Earlier that day Paul and Brenda Garber had been escorted onto the camp to take pictures of the damaged homes. Danielle had seen the pictures and called to let us know our homes had been burned. She told us that all of the staff housing had burned and most of it looked like black spots on the ground, with nothing left. She also let Korey and Lauren know that she had seen Korey’s Truck and Lauren’s car burned. I think all of our hearts sunk at this time, but it was nice to finally know the truth of the sitation.

At this point, Korey and Lauren decided it would be best to go back to Albuquerque where they could be with family. The headed back to the Bemis house, where they packed their stuff up, got Dugan ready and headed out towards Roswell. Dugan was noticeably upset to leave Sadie behind.

Korey and Lauren decided to meet up with Howard Ours who had been in Roswell since the evacuation began. They sat outside of Starbucks talking for an hour or so. It was hard to see Howard, and know what he was going through. Howard said he did not think he would be returning back to Bonita Park to live, and this was really hard to hear. Korey and Lauren left Starbucks with tears in their eyes.  

Korey and Lauren then headed to Albuquerque and arrived just before 8 pm. It was good to see family for the first time. The first pictures we saw of our house or any of our possessions was on KOAT’s website. It was a shot of Korey’s Toyota Pickup parked infront of what use to be our house. Since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast we decided to head to Dion’s for dinner...that is our comfort food!

We have spent the next few days seeing family members, and taking care of business items like cancelling our internet, deferring our student loans, and getting basic items we need. Our families and friends have showered us with donations, and Lauren has joked that she has more clothes now than she did before the fire.

Lauren has been working to call and email all group leaders for the month of June to let them know we will not be able to host any groups until at least the first of July.

It has been a roller coaster of emotions but Korey and Lauren are both sure of one thing...they are dedicated to the ministry of Bonita Park and despite the items they have lost, they are excited for the adventure that awaits them at Bonita Park in the coming weeks and months.

1 comment:

Bev said...

Thank you so much for sharing! I'm so sorry you are going through this! But Katie just said how neat it is to see that you are both so positive and hopeful about all of this! Thank you for letting you hope in Christ shine through this! We love you both!