Recovering from Hurricane Irene

You may remember seeing these pictures on our blog back in August. There was mud everywhere. Both the restaurant and the mobile home behind it were covered with the sticky smelly stuff. It took a LOT of shoveling. The flood water came up to the eves of Sandy's Restaurant (top right). A lot of places were not so lucky. Many people lost their homes and everything in them. If you google "Hurricane Irene Bethel VT" you will be amazed at the pictures of damage the flood did. Mike spent two days working in the trailer and I spent one day in the trailer and one day in the restaurant.

The next pictures show what it looks like now. Sandy's Restaurant and ice cream shop opened March 15th (8 months after the flood). We ate there on opening night and gave her some pictures we had taken. Sandy's is the only restaurant in Sharon. There were two, but Dixie's has not reopened.

The owner of Sandy's is named Sharon. She was not planning to reopen in the beginning, but after the volunteers came in and cleaned everything up, she changed her mind. She said, "I just can't believe what these Mormons have done for me."

A group of young men and young women from our ward in their yellow Helping Hands T-Shirts spent an entire day shoveling mud into buckets and carrying it out of the restaurant. Our ward made 100 sack lunches for Saturday and 200 for Sunday for all of the people helping at various sites around Sharon. Those same kids from our ward continued to help flood victims in neighboring towns every Saturday for more than 2 months. We have amazing young people in our ward.
I tried to take a picture of them when they were working in Bethel, but I only had a second to snap the picture and I pushed the wrong button and turned the camera off. The town of Randolph gave them an award for their amazing service.

Anyway, when the inside of Sandy's restaurant was rebuilt, insulation was added. It never had any when it was originally built. Because of the insulation she decided to open year around instead of just in the summer. The restaurant is really nicer inside than it was before. By the way Mike had a double hamburger and fries. I ordered a fish sandwich. The food was good and the fries were some of the best I have ever eaten. We haven't tried their ice cream yet.

The next picture is the home of Paul and Dietre Feeney in our ward. They have 3 children ranging from about 6-15 years of age. I had two pictures but one ended up getting deleted accidently. A lot of dirt has already been put back in and you can't really tell in this picture, but the water from the nearby

river swirled around their house

creating a whirlpool that took all of the dirt away leaving the house sagging on both sides like a big frowny face, balancing like a teeter-totter. Most of their belongings were washed away. Sister Feeney has spent years making darling scrapbooks. All of her scrapbooks and pictures are gone. She made the comment that it will be nice to go home, but it will never be the same because your neighbors that you love are gone. If you look just to the left of their house you can see all that is left (the top story) of their neighbor's house. I had a picture of the finished Feeney house, but when I was deleting some extra spaces the picture went with it. (Blogger is not really user friendly)

Anyway, Feeney's have had an amazing lot of volunteer help but everyone loves them. They are just great people. It's time for prayers or I would tell you their story.

Rachel just said it was snowing in Arizona and I heard Utah had a storm today too. WELL GUESS WHAT. It was warm and sunny and we worked out on the grounds today. It felt like spring and WE LOVED IT!

COUNT YOUR MANY BLESSINGS! WE SEND OUR LOVE TO EVERYONE.