Well, the Jones family has had some excitement in the box since we last blogged and some of it has not been good. On August 14th, Elsi, Emily's 5 year old Pekingese decided it would be fun to play in the road and was hit by a car. This is the 1st dog we bred and kept, and she has never left our side when outside, so it was a shock to us that she went toward the road. We have decided that this fire has not only altered our lives, but our dogs lives also, so we are trying to be sensitive to their needs. After a not so small ER bill, we have found out that Elsi has a dislocated jaw, 3 broken teeth that have fallen out, her pelvic bones are broke in 3, maybe 4 places and she has compression in her spine that is keeping her back legs from moving. But she is alive, and that is an answered prayer. I kept thinking how horrible it would be for this dog to survive the fire, just to be hit by a car, and for Emily to lose everything she owned except her dog, then lose her dog too. But God is Good and kept Elsi alive to see another day and Emily happy.
Sunday night my car starting acting up with the windshield wipers and then on Monday we noticed that the windshield is cracked. The windshield has a range sensor that tells the wipers when to come on, so with it being cracked the wipers stay on all the time. Jay has pulled the fuse to make them stop (working on getting that fixed???? when some money comes in). Then Thursday afternoon a terrible storm came by. Jay had gone to pick Emily up from volleyball practice and had a flat tire on the way home (in the rain and remember the wipers would not work). So Jay and Emily were stranded on Melvin Hill while Meredith and I suffered through the storm in the box. Needless to say, the power went out not once, but twice, and the rain itself felt like it was going to knock the box over, the wind added to that fear. We managed through it, my dad came and helped Jay put on the spare and he finally got home around 7pm.
To cook a meal in the box is stifling, so we are using our grill outside to cook most of our foods. Thursday after Jay got home, he was cooking hamburgers (in the drizzle) when he came in and said a power line/transformer was on fire across the street. I called 911, told them my address, they wanted to know the address where the fire was. I said, just tell them my address, they will know where to go, they battled my house fire just a month ago. Sure enough, just a few minutes later the great Green Creek fire department was at the scene of the electrical fire. Before they arrived, we watched in amazement, the white and orange colors of the fire, so unlike a regular fire, and the humming noise was very loud. It went out, then started back again and about 30 minutes later we were without power and phone. We decided to go on to bed around 8:30pm after opening all of the windows in the box that will open. I told Jay that we were REALLY roughing it now, without power/air/water. The power came back on around 10:30pm, so we managed okay.
On Friday, as Jay was taking the girls to school the transmission went out on the Suburban. This is the same car we had the transmission replaced in just 3 years ago when it stranded us in FL and we had to pay 3 times the normal amount to get it rebuilt. So we are down to one car, and that car has a cracked windshield and the wipers do not work. PRAY FOR US!
We have decided that we should change our last name from Jones to Job. I have been reading in Job the last few weeks trying to keep his attitude, trying to remember no matter how low we go, God is always with us, taking care of us. Pray that God will continue to teach me patience throughout these trials, and that I will be open to listening to what He has to tell me. On the bright side, the house is moving along, some of the floors have been torn out and the burnt pieces in the walls and where the roof goes has been replaced with new wood. It is nice to see new stuff being done, the carpenter told us this week his goal is to have us in the house by Christmas, so we are praying that things continue to go smoothly and the time line keeps moving up!! haha
After re-reading this blog, it seems like we have had a rough 2 weeks, and we have. Know though, that God IS WITH US, and we feel His presence in our lives even while we are down. Have we asked, what else can happen? Yep, but we are taking each bad thing and looking toward the positive and knowing that God has something good in store for us, as long as we continue to look toward Him for our needs.
Tamara Jones
Snow and all, we were able to get all three bedrooms put together with furniture. The living room delivery truck is stuck in Rutherfordton, the delivery man had to spend the night at the firehouse. Moved about 1/2 of the stuff from the box to the house, until it got too COLD to go back outside. What a great life I lead thanks all to Him.