It’s hard to imagine the extent of devastation flood waters can cause within a home until one finds him or herself inside a home that had been covered by river water for over a week.
My friends and I donned our gear, grabbed our shovels, and pushed our wheelbarrows through a door and into a world we simply hadn’t expected. The layers were something like this. Mud, rotting food, furniture, mud, cabinets and appliances, mud, silverware, plates, bowls, more mud, drywall, insulation and mud.
It was 1993. Mt. Pinatubo had erupted in the Philippines in 1991 setting off a world climate collision that led to a massive build up in the reservoirs managing the flow of the Missouri River in 1992. This was followed by heavy Spring rains in 1993 on saturated grounds and a crisis situation. To save the flood control system and avert catastrophic failures, flooding had to happen. Waters were let through and rivers rose.
The small town of Waldron, Missouri, was among the villages upstream from Kansas City, Missouri, along the Missouri River. Much of Waldron was located in the hills that rose above the valley but some homes were adjacent the flat, fertile farm fields where rich soil had been deposited by the river across centuries. In early years, these plots would have never been considered for a home but given the extensive levee system that had been built and proven protective, a dozen or more homes had popped up, including the one we were standing in.
A father had built the home for his daughter on the family property. It was a nice home with a full basement, a main living floor and an upstairs. She had been in it less than two years. The levee however, had failed and flood waters had crested about two feet up into the second story. It stayed at that level for more than a week before slowly beginning to subside.
By the time we arrived several weeks later, the water was gone and the grounds around the home were now still muddy but passable. A roll off dumpster was placed outside the home and our job was simply to load wheelbarrows full of any and everything and transport the loads to the dumpster. We weren’t to sort through anything, just grab as large of a handful as we could to add to those manning the wheelbarrows. The plan was simply to get stuff out of the house and fans in to see if the structure could be saved. By lunchtime, we had barely made a dent.
Matha Wilson, Adventist Community Services coordinator for the region and coordinator of our attempts to help, summoned us and other work crews from other houses to lunch. As we munched on our sandwiches, Martha introduced us to the owner of the home. Without giving much thought to what I was offering, I innocently asked, “Is there anything special to you you’d like for us to be watching for?” Her reply was, “My dad gave me a ring my senior year in high school. If you could find that, it would mean the world to me.”
Every member of our team immediately stared at me and needed not to share their thoughts of what on earth I was thinking when I’d asked that question. And then all silently turned their own thoughts to a simple two-word silent prayer: “Lord, HELP!!!!” We all, truthfully, would far rather have been tasked with finding the proverbial needle in a haystack.
God didn’t seem too bothered though.
We had only been back to work for about 30 minutes when someone lifted a soggy bundle of drywall and insulation to discover a ring all teed up and ready to be seen.
It can be easy to dismiss the stories one hears of “simple gifts from God” as fun, misattributed coincidences. But not when you’re standing in a house filled with three feet of muck, and a tiny ring is lying exactly where it must be to be found.