Time To Get Out of Dodge!

You never quite know how your prayers will be answered!  I was not looking forward to leaving Calgary, and was praying for the Lord to help me feel calm and settled, when an August snowstorm hit Calgary. Elder Harding and Fred Layton were, luckily, already well on their way out to Halifax with a loaded van, and I was making a few last visits around southern Alberta, after being at the MTC, when the storm came along. I returned home to Calgary to a real mess. The Large tree in our back yard had split in half and fallen!

The Challenge --- I was on my own to figure this out, or at least, it felt that way. In reality, I was not , as God was watching over us the whole time! We were so blessed that this tree fell the way it did. Nothing on our property was damaged, when it could so easily have fallen right onto our house, delaying me from getting  to the mission field and causing a lot more frustration.  

The Blessing -- God sent us an angel, in the form of "Monte", a friend of our daughter and her husband in New Brighton ward, who came and helped me out. He spent 2 hours cutting the damaged limb, and getting it off the fence and refused any payment.

Then, as Elder Harding and I spoke about who to call to remove the rest of the tree before it fell onto our home, we both felt impressed to call T. Strothers, who has a landscaping company. We did not know at the time that he had any connections for tree removal, we just felt we should call him. He said that he did have a guy, and when he checked it out, this man had only 2 days open that he could work.

Challenge --- it was Wednesday when the tree fell, and I had to fly out Saturday, plus, every other  single tree removal company that I called was booked solid for two weeks, or were not taking on any new jobs!

Blessing, or should I say Miracle --- this crew that Strothers knew had Thursday And Friday open and were able to come over and completely remove the entire tree.

Here is what the back yard looks like, just before I left!  So.... the Lord was watching over us, AND instead of being sad to leave Calgary, I was just so relieved to be "Getting Out Of Dodge" so to speak, with the tree taken care of and before anything else could come along to hamper me getting to the mission field!

The other part of the story is that our neighbor to the North of us heard a huge cracking sound as our tree split and fell at 5 am, Wednesday, Sept 10th, and so he got out of bed to see what had happened. When he saw our tree had fallen, he went and checked on his trees, and saw that a large crack was developing in a tree in his back yard, and it was starting to fall towards his house. If our tree had not fallen and woke him up, he would have gone off to work, and come home to a damaged roof and more. As it was, he had time to get a lift in, and cut down the tree before it could fall.   God works in mysterious ways!

Thank you to all who helped us deal with this --- good friends who let me lean on them, giving me emotional and physical support. You  are guardian angels. We are in your debt!