Ping Pong Balls from the Heavens

Thursday September 25, 2014
We got our van back after 3 weeks of it being in the shop for repair. It had a radiator leak of some sort that appeared right after we had it in for routine service.  They took it out and sent it to the repair shop but they said it couldn't be repaired.  They tried to order a new one but no one in Uruguay had one for our make and model.  So they ended up having a custom radiator made for the van.  Mike put it to work right away by moving elders to a new apartment today. The trailer helped alot in reducing the number of trips back and forth.  In the past in has been 10-12 trips.  Today was 5 trips.  It was still really slow going even though the move was only 4 blocks because the road was full of potholes.

He got back into Montevideo around 5 pm and we picked up Mary, our cook at the mission home and took her grocery shopping for the oro conference tomorrow.  We need to cook breakfast and lunch.

What an adventure that turned out to be!

Those two black dots to the right are the hailstones
just before they hit our windshield.
People later reported lots of windshields broken.

Hermana Schaelling and Ots called Elder Burnett for rescue.  After the burst of hail, it continued to just pour buckets of rain for a good hour.  The sisters were stuck in a plaza and as Mike went to drive around the plaza, the water was almost over the hood.  He said he kept praying that the van wouldn't stall.  He didn't want to have to get out and push!
After the rescue, Mary and I were still shopping inside and I remembered that we had left a window open.  So I sent Mike to rescue what he could back at the apartment.  We had a shoebox full of hail and some wet papers, and alot of water to mop up.  Not too bad though.  Lesson learned.  Never leave the windows open even if the weather seems to nice.

We were glad that this storm held off at least until Mike had finished moving the Elders.