Hurricane Sandy hits Long Island

9th Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in NY-NY South     October 31, 2012

Whirlwind of an Adventure!  Hurricane Sandy!

Hey all!

Boy howdy, these last two weeks have been quite the adventure. I never would have ever guessed that any of this was going to happen. But I guess I need to start with getting to the mission field before I go into the hurricane adventures. 

So we arrived last Monday afternoon. We visited President Calderwood's house for dinner and to spend the night. Not much happened there. Tuesday morning we headed off to transfer meeting where we met our trainers and got our first area. My trainer is a really cool guy named Elder Wolfe. He is from Sandy, Utah and is about 18 months out on his mission. Our area is a place called Far Rockaway. It's a peninsula just south of Long Island, but it's considered part of Queens. They call it a zebra pool because our area covers both English and Spanish people. We live in an apartment with two other elders, one of which happens to be Elder Bush, my companion from the MTC. So that was kind of funny. 

Let me tell you about Far Rockaway. It is quite the place. It's a super big area so my companion and I get a car to get around. The streets there are all done by numbers. Our area starts on 44th street, closer to the mainland. It goes out until 136th street on the end of the peninsula. The lower the number, the more poor the area. Or at least that's the general concept here. You go from really poor, really sad living conditions in the 40's to the 60's, to kind of a better situation in the 70's to the 90's. By the time you get to the 100's it is all very rich homes there. Lots of whites and Jews and they all have these incredible, huge homes. They don't like to talk to us very much so we don't go there too often. We only have one member down there and we just picked up an investigator over there. 

That is an incredible story there. Her name is Lisa; she and her husband are chiropractors and they have two cute little kids. She was brought up Catholic, but told us that her whole life she has always felt something was missing from her church. She actually looked us up on Mormon.org and we got the referral to go talk to her from the MTC. We met with her last Thursday, that was my first time teaching the first discussion in the real world. And let me tell you, it was freaking awesome. She loved all of it. It was a really cool lesson. We taught and bore testimony and the Spirit came and we know she felt it too. We gave her a Book of Mormon at the end and she was so excited to start reading in it.  She asked if there were stories in it that she could share with her kids so they could start getting to know it. She is a golden investigator. It was incredible to teach her. We planned to teach her the Plan of Salvation this week and invite her family to be baptized, but things kind of took a different turn. More on that later.

We taught a bunch of people that first week. It's all new and crazy to me, it kind of still feels unreal in some ways. My Spanish is doing alright, but we teach a lot of people from the Dominican Republic and they have an interesting form of Spanish that's not very easy to understand. That and they talk super fast. It's stupid how fast they talk. But so far, they Dominicans make the best food, so it's hard to complain too much about them. We actually have a Dominican woman named Tilsa scheduled to be baptized this Sunday. Well, she was scheduled for this Sunday. We're not entirely sure whether that's still possible or if we need to push it back. 

So the real adventure got started on Thursday afternoon. We were visiting a less active member and she asked us what we were doing about the hurricane. We had heard nothing about it so she showed us a news report on it. I guess there was a hurricane here last year, Hurricane Irene, that was supposed to be a big deal then ended up being nothing. So people kind of felt that this hurricane would be the same thing as last year. Over the next few days we asked people what they thought and it was pretty unanimous. Everyone was staying, it was all blown out of proportion, it would probably just rain for a few days. So we kept going about our merry way. Saturday evening we got a text from the Zone Leaders. They told us that we would stay until Monday evening and they would let us know by 4 PM if we would be evacuated or not. We were kind of feeling that it would be a repeat of last year as well, my companion wanted to just stay in our apartment and wait it out. The problem with Far Rockaway is that it's a peninsula so it's surrounded on both sides by water. This means that a solid hurricane would dominate all of Far Rock. It would be bad news. 

Sunday we went to church. That was an adventure in itself. I was asked to play piano for priesthood meeting, for the primary program, and for sacrament meeting. Then two of the speakers dropped out for sacrament meeting so they asked me and Elder Bush to speak. In Spanish, of course. So we each had to give a ten minute talk on testimonies. Elder Bush had some time to prepare, but I was busy playing piano in Primary, so I went up there with nothing. But everyone said I did fine, so I guess it worked out. During church, we got a text from President Calderwood that we would be evacuating that afternoon. Elder Wolfe and I were headed to stay with some other elders in east New York, a place called Richmond Hill. Elder Bush and his companion were going somewhere else. So after church, we headed home and packed up a few things. We only thought we would be there for like a day and that we'd be back in Far Rock by Tuesday, so we didn't bring that much.

We got to Richmond Hill and were greeted by Elder Bond and Elder Solis. Very nice guys. We had to spend a lot of time together, so it's a good thing. We didn't do much that night, just played some cards and hung out. Monday morning came and we still had little idea what was going on. It wasn't that bad in our area, just some rain and some wind. Nothing out of the ordinary. It just felt like a normal, rainy day. Our landlord lives on the floor above us in the house, and he let us borrow his Kindle Fire to send emails to our parents. While we had it, we checked out cnn to get some news on the hurricane. That's when we started to realize that this was a really big deal. We were hardly getting anything where we were. A few trees fell; one fell right outside our house, but nothing really bad. So Monday we just hung out and rode out the storm. 

Tuesday morning, we still had no news from the mission president. We just kept up our three day chill session because there was nothing else to do. We drove around the city a bit and saw all the trees that fell around the city. Lots of fallen trees, but nothing really bad in Richmond Hill. My companion and I walked around Brooklyn a bit because he knows the area really well. It hardly hit them at all. We asked some members about it and they said that it didn't affect them at all. Such a drastic difference from what we would find on Wednesday morning. 

Wednesday morning, we finally got the call to head out and do some work. Most of the elders in southern New York were called to come to an area in Nassau County to help clean up houses around one neighborhood. We all showed up, ready to help, but very few people needed our help. The main problem with this area seemed to be a lack of power and there was some flooding damage. Not fun to be a part of, but nothing too horrible. We wandered for an hour and nobody wanted our help. Then we heard that there was a group headed to Far Rockaway. Elder Wolfe and I jumped right on that and headed over to our area. We're responsible for the eternal salvation of all those people, so we might as well go help them clean up their houses in this time of need. 

Elder Wolfe & Elder Erickson 10-31-12  Far Rockaway NY.

I was not prepared for the amount of damage we would see there. The whole place was just wrecked. Fences are gone, trees are knocked over, cars were moved around by the flooding. It was just horrible. You can see it in the faces of the people as they walk around, this place got hit hard. We drove down to the farther end of the peninsula because there are more homes there and less big apartment buildings. That's when things got even worse. The hurricane hit everyone so hard here, it's unreal. Flooding up to five and six feet in some places. Lots of streets were still flooded with a lot of water as we drove around. And sand. Sand everywhere. So much, you don't know what to do with it. How did all this sand wash onto the streets?

We decided to go visit Lisa, our investigator, since she lives in one of the worse hit areas. She was doing alright, but she showed us her basement and that was rough. Their entire basement filled with water and it almost flooded into the main house. Water had started to break through the floorboards. But they were alright and felt very blessed. She told us that she would let us know if we needed anything. We proceeded down the street to help whoever else we could. There was just so much damage done to these houses. It was so sad. The houses on the edge of the beach were just destroyed. We walked along and were in awe at how these houses had just crumpled and fell apart. We talked to a bunch of people on the street and offered our help but nobody would take it. They're so afraid of looters and people who say they will help and then steal stuff, that nobody wanted our help. It was really sad.  The sand is everywhere and everyone has water in their basements. They need to pump all the water out, but where to pump it? The sewers are all plugged with sand right now, so they can't do much. It's going to take a long time to fix everything. 

We finally found a woman, her name was Marie, who was willing to let us help her. When we walked up and offered to help, she started to break down in tears because she felt so overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do. It was just she and her husband, Ernesto. Their main house was okay, but their basement was completely flooded and there was sand everywhere. We got right to work, clearing a canal so the water could drain, once they found a pump. Then we cleared the sand from the front of the house. She was so grateful for the help that she offered to take us to dinner. We had other elders with us, so we couldn't accept. Then she tried to give us $100. We turned that down as well. We told her that it was reward enough for us to be able to help her. She reluctantly said that was okay, but insisted on hugging us for our work. I wish we could have stayed and helped more, but we had other directions from President Calderwood. 

Since it's Halloween, all elders have to be in by 6. That still applies even now. So we headed back to hang out again in our little house. We're getting really good at that. Elder Wolfe and I headed over to the chapel to send out our email since we missed our P-day due to a hurricane. 

And that brings me here. I don't even know how to describe what today was like. A week ago, I was stressed about trying to learn the roads and figure out the people and learn all the names and figure out the Spanish. Now my only concern is helping all these people rebuild their lives. Some people lost everything in this storm. My whole mission changed in just a few days. There is so much work to be done in Far Rock right now. We can't go back to our apartment because there's no power there. And there probably won't be for a couple more days. In the meantime, we'll just keep living in Richmond Hill and driving back to help out everyone that we can. I forgot to mention, but on the very far end of the peninsula, there was a big fire. 108 houses were burned to the ground in that fire. It's just unbelievable. So much damage. So sad. I'm just happy to have this opportunity to be here to help these people in need. We will be helping people for a long time here. 

In the meantime, all is well with me. I am very blessed to have been moved to a safe area that wasn't affected too much. God has blessed me with health and safety so it's only right that I give back to help those less fortunate in Far Rockaway. It's a good opportunity to serve and show people that our church is only here to help people. I wish it didn't require so much destruction, but this will have humbled a lot of people and perhaps they will be more willing to accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives now. But we won't be proselyting for a long time with all the work there is to be done. 

So that's the tale so far. How I arrived in New York and six days later my whole area was destroyed by the most expensive natural disaster in American history. It will make for an excellent story when it's all over. 

Love,

Elder Erickson