Rock or Sand?

The foolish man built his house upon the sand.  The wise man built his house upon the rock.  The Coulsons bought a house that is perched on a man-made flat spot half way up a hill.  Hmmm.  Sand or rock?  Not sure now and we are having our doubts.

Clean up on St Croix since Hurricane Maria is actually really pretty exciting.  Last week it was nearly impossible to drive around on this end of our island.  Every main street and many side streets were (and now others are!)  blocked by men with huge trucks, front end loaders and saws cutting back broken trees and snapped off electrical poles and removing debris from the sides of roads.  Then, nearly the minute that part of the project is finished, the dump trucks and loaders are replaced by beefy bucket trucks and crews of hard-hatted men (the ones on Queen Mary Highway were from New York but there are close to 500 linemen from the mainland here on island from all kinds of places), and all of a sudden there are brand new power poles with brand new electrical lines on them lining the roads, inching their way across the island!  People are working seven days a week.  The territory’s goal is to have 90% of the homes territory wide to be enjoying electricity by Christmas.   Beside linemen from around America, there are teams of FEMA reps here.  Their trucks are parked around the island so that they are easily accessible.  There are also lots of military – National Guardsmen (and women!) here protecting assets and lending a hand.  Our local park and playground in Frederiksted was a total mess.  I noticed it as I drove by on Friday – tree limbs and ripped roofing littering the park, the fence annihilated by blowing debris.  Across the street is the beach.  Wait, that’s where the sea is, but the sand has been missing since Maria – instead of a gorgeous beach, there are just rocks.  All the sand is across the road and drifted against the park fence.  Or I should say was.  Yesterday on the way to church we saw an army of people in fatigues working there.  An hour later we came back by and stopped.  The park is usable again – debris is picked up and the fence was being repaired.  A crew was beginning to work on the bathroom building.  And.  Front end loaders, a skid steer, and a dozer were returning the sand to its proper place!  We stopped and talked with and thanked several of the guys working.  They are volunteers from the Alaska National Guard.  Yay!  Heroes!

We’ve been so encouraged by the progress we can see, but there’s still so very much to be done.  Everyone is doing their best and there are so many true heroes here – local and visiting.  But. There are no phone land lines so getting ahold of businesses is impossible.  You just go to the site and hope they are open (or wait until they are in the parking lot waiting to get your propane tank refilled…). If you don’t know exactly who you need to contact, you are really in a maze.  For example…

Remember our house upon the undetermined underpinning?  Well, here’s the deal.  Our house, happily called Pirate’s Perch because it rests on a man-made flat spot, has always been surrounded by a nice yard on all four sides.  The sea side next to the house had about a 10-15 foot wide yard, then dropped down a pretty substantial grade filled with trees and green.  When we got back here two weeks ago, a large portion of that yard had disappeared.  The huge mahogany tree and all other plant life were in a mangled heap 83 feet down, leaving a precipice just three feet from the back of the house.  It’s clear that the soil got so full of water that as soon as the banshee winds of the storm hit, they took the trees and a lot of the hill with it. It’s also clear that what is there isn’t stable.  Scary.  Sleepless for the first night.  God’s heard a lot from me lately.  Clearly we need to build a retaining wall (the size of one in China!).  We need equipment and expertise and advice.  For two weeks I have been talking with FEMA people, calling public works, having no luck at all.  Now please do NOT hear that as a criticism of FEMA or anyone else.  The FEMA people we have met are all here to focus on roofs and structures, they are not engineers and soil experts.  They have taken our name and number and have been trying to help.  With a load as overwhelming as this, every issue is an emergency and there are only so many hours in the day.  So.  Yesterday we stopped to thank the crews at the beach and park, and noticed that a soil and roads truck from Public Works was parked next to the dozer moving sand.  We talked to the guys working, explained our need, and asked them who to talk to.  They gave us info on how to find the right person at Public Works, but then smiled.  The advice one man shared then was precious.  Talk to this man, he told us, he knows how to help.  He gave us the man’s name and directions to his house.

Summoning up our chutzpah, we drove directly to the man’s house, into his yard and asked to see him. (Not really something we’d normally do, but…).  His grown son reported that the man wasn’t home, but kindly took our names and number and promised to have him call us.  Which he did!  Less than two hours later both the man and his son were at our house, talking about retaining walls and remedies to keep our house from falling down.  Yay!  He left us with the promise that he was going to look into some ideas and get back to us with some recommendations.  Yay!

Sometimes God speaks to me by calming me inside.  This has happened a lot in the last two weeks.  After that first sleepless night worrying the house was going to fall in at any minute, I have been really quite calm.  Confident that God can and will provide for us in any eventuality, electricity or no, house on a rock, house on sand at the bottom of the hill. It’s all good, because God is all good.  Now, He has brought into our lives a local man, willing even on Sunday to come and share his knowledge to help a neighbor.  We are blessed by God’s hand in every situation whether it is hard or easy. Right now He is easy to see here on St. Croix.  He’s in the new leaves on trees that had been made bare, He is in the hands of hundreds of willing people who are here to help, He is in smiles and tears and joy and fear and frustration.  My prayer for you this week is that you are aware of God’s care and love for you wherever you are.  😊