"The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood"
--- Douglas Adam (English author, screenwriter, & humorist; 1952 - 2001)
Storms hit the city of Matamoros, Mexico hard. There’s a line in the old 1995 Jumanji movie where they summon a monsoon and the lady says, “Well, a little water never hurt anybody”, to which Robin Williams replies, “Yeah, but a lot can kill you”. I can sympathize with that sentiment. You never feel dry living next to the Gulf of Mexico. What's worse is trying to traverse through it.
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WEATHERING THE STORMS
Before I lived in Mexico, I always had a certain idea of what the country looked like in my imagination influenced heavily by what Hollywood made it out to be. That mental picture was usually a desert (See "Mission Call: Reynosa, Mexico"). The irony is that Utah, where I've lived most of my life, is more "desert" than most of the places where I lived in Mexico, of which Matamoros ranks number one in terms of precipitation. It's difficult to find reliable consensus on precipitation estimates, but I tried my best. To put it into perspective, Utah is reported to have an average of 15 to 17 inches of rainfall per year. The average annual rainfall of Matamoros is estimated to be about 27 inches per year. The estimate for Reynosa is less certain and the estimates I found are quite different between 18 and 23 inches, Rio Bravo is similar at around 19 to 21.5 inches, and Valle Hermoso is close by at 20.7 inches. Any way you look at it, Matamoros is the likeliest of the four cities to get the most rain by almost half a foot. Compared to other places in the world, even other places of Mexico, I understand that this might not sound like a lot of rain, but when you consider that the city was only about 27 feet above sea level, that means that the rainwater lingers and causes flooding. I'm not saying that Matamoros is the only city that experiences flooding either, but I'm just saying that as someone who spent almost 12 hours per day every day for nearly 2 years almost exclusively walking on said streets, I need you to appreciate what a pain it was.
Whenever there was lightning, the whole sky illuminated but there wasn’t usually any thunder to be heard which I understand is impossible. The best explanation I have is that the lightning was farther away than it looked (called "heat lightning") but either way, it must have somehow dissipated by the time it reached my ears. The sky just silently flashed. Coming from dry Utah, I didn’t know what real rain was; when I got to Mexico, it looked, sounded, and felt like the heavens had pulled the plug to their largest floating swimming pool. It fell hard and loud and with a force like a bucket of water dumped all at once. But I guess if we’re gonna count our blessings, I never saw any crocodiles.
I mentioned previously that the low elevation of the city made flooding terrible but the weather also changed from one moment to the next in Matamoros because the winds carried all the moisture in from the coast (roughly twenty miles or thirty-two kilometers away). I'd take a step outside the front door to gauge the weather before leaving the house and within hours the weather could be completely opposite for better or worse. At times, it would look like a wet day ahead of us and within an hour the sun would come out, turn the wet streets into a steam bath and I’d be forced to haul my heavy coat under my arm all day because there was no room for it in my backpack or time to drop it off at home. Even if we did magically have time, I never would have been guaranteed that I wouldn't need it again. Looking back, the kind of coat that I took was more based on temperature rather than clouds.
When it did rain, as I mentioned earlier, the waters came up several inches (See "2nd Area: Buena Vista, Matamoros"). My best precautionary defenses were to always wear my boots from Rio Bravo (See "Chilly, Muddy, and Moving") and have a jacket (at the very least) available on my person; umbrellas weren’t the best because the wind easily snapped them. Whatever the case was in the mission, I always kept my scriptures and pamphlets wrapped in plastic grocery bags in my backpack. Better safe than sorry! Our pocket planners in our shirts usually bore the brunt of water damage (See "It Shall Be Opened"); if it wasn’t rain, it was sweat and dirt. We’d laminate the covers at a stationery store but there wasn’t much we could do to protect the inside pages from the elements.
OVER THE RIVER
Of all the many flood experiences I went through, one sticks out the most in my mind (apart from G.G.’s confirmation). It was our P-Day (preparation day) and as such, we had several tasks to do that could only be done on that day of the week because of time limitations and mission rules including shopping and emailing home (See "P-Days & Peceras"). We had places to go!
The four of us made it out the front door just fine; that was the good part. We were blessed that our street was one of the better streets to avoid flooding. It wasn’t raining at that moment but the lingering clouds were daunting, the remnants of recent heavy rainfall. We set out towards the cyber café to email home which usually took us about twenty minutes or less to get to on foot. There were still many puddles of rainfall scattered around the neighborhood. We took photos of each other leaping across the water trying to make light of it all, laughing even. That is until we got to the wider roads.
We got to the main street, Avenida Del Trabajo (Ah-veh-nee-dah Dehl Trah-bah-hoh) and we had no choice but to get our feet seriously wet (If you watch the video below and look around the 49-second mark, you can see where I was standing in the picture to the right). Laughing hopelessly at the river of a street before us, we took turns sprinting through the slow-moving water.
Once across the "river" we shimmied against the apartment building walls and played hopscotch on the protruding patches of flooded sidewalk through the maze-like side streets as best we could to our destination (See "Boom! Bang! Balazos!"). The detours we had to take to avoid the flooded areas delayed us significantly. That took about forty minutes. What's worse? It was only after that detour that we discovered that the cyber café was closed due to the weather! We were frustrated at the inconvenience, obviously, but we laughed it off a bit. We kinda assumed it would be closed but we were optimistic and thought we'd check to be sure. But the next thought running through my mind was where were we going to write? Emailing home was a special occasion and we weren’t going to wait for another seven long days.
To compensate for the high rain waters, as previously alluded, many buildings were built above ground level. Even many sidewalks were elevated high off the streets, the most extreme of which was two maybe even three feet up. Sandbags tried keeping water at bay but their usefulness was limited. Occasional cinder blocks and car tires were left in the middle of flooded roads to use as stepping stones; so you can gauge how deep the water got. The only problem with this was keeping balance on a wobbly rock or a floppy rubber tire if you risked using them as stepping stones. And of course, getting wet feet was at some point inevitable; the only question was how long you could postpone it.
We checked another two or three places nearby that had public computers. Two of us went to the one, the others to the other because there weren't enough computers for all of us. The water licked the glass front door like a cliff by the ocean. On its own, the water wouldn't come in; however, foolish drivers sent waves in every direction.
If you watch the Avenida del Trabajo video above, where I am standing is on the corner to the left by the blue cibercafé at the 1:12 mark. Even with the streets turned to rivers, there were still a few vehicles that dared to drive. Sometimes big ones could technically handle it but others had no business trying. I remember watching a semi pushing through the water, leaving an enormous tidal wave-like impression behind it; like the V-formation that birds makes, only that this sloshing wave increased in width and height like a tsunami does. Seeing the impending waves heading towards us, my companion and I had to time it in order to jump over them before the approaching waves drenched our pant legs, like playing cat and mouse at the beach. Fortunately, we made it to the cyber cafe with minimal water on our clothes and somehow found solutions to get everything else done we needed to that day.
To be honest, so long as we got what we needed to do, it all made for good stories, even the "inconvenient" times that life threw at us. It was something of an adventure. Some places looked like a lake, just a lake that had trees and fences and stop signs built in the middle of it.
I know missionaries who went to North Matamoros for a Zone meeting (when I was no longer in the city) and coming out of the chapel discovered water up to their waist. They had to carry their backpacks over their head and wade through the dirty water. Again, it was not pleasant, I am sure, but those missionaries made the most of the situation, laughed it off, and proudly showed the photos of their flooded adventure with their families. That wasn’t the only occasion where missionaries had to wade through water up to their waist. I’ve seen pictures. It's part of the adventure!
JOY IN THE JOURNEY
“We imagine that God has all of His blessings locked in a huge cloud up in heaven, refusing to give them to us unless we comply with some strict, paternalistic requirements He has set up. But the commandments aren’t like that at all. In reality, Heavenly Father is constantly raining blessings upon us. It is our fear, doubt, and sin that, like an umbrella, block these blessings from reaching us. His commandments are the loving instructions and the divine help for us to close the umbrella so we can receive the shower of heavenly blessings.” (Oct. 2014 General Conf.)
Often, we are so busy looking for rainbows that we fail to first thank God that there is rain. Rain is not inherently a bad thing. Rain is one of God’s wonders. How amazing is it that He designed a way for all plant life to be watered and animal life to be sustained? To naturally filter water and transport it many miles inland from the ocean? To provide temporary shade from the sun? How amazing is it that the same heavy raindrops that smack the ground were once hovering thousands of feet in the sky with no strings attached? It’s incredible! Rain is largely what makes life sustainable. Without it, a drought would be inevitable. Rain was often seen as a blessing scripturally (Deut. 11:11,14) because it allowed people (who were primarily agricultural) to feed themselves; lack of rain was typically a consequence of bad behavior in both the Bible and Book of Mormon (Helaman 11:4-17). It really depends on how you look at it, I suppose, whether rain is good or bad or both. Sometimes, life's circumstances can be seen in the same light. No matter our circumstances, we can choose to see the good in anything.
Whatever the case be if you decide rain represents something good or something bad, this is what Jesus said, “…he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. 5:45)
We share what is called, a "common humanity". We all go through good and bad times. But I know that although we all have occasional rainy gloomy moments in life, the beautiful sunny days far outnumber them. A positive outlook makes any work work. There must be a balance in all things and a willingness to handle things as they come (See "Temperance"). Sometimes we have to adjust our course, but we will get there. Like the weather, we might not have control over life’s situations, and we may not always be able to predict it, but keeping the spirit alive with gratitude in our hearts will make any rainy situation bearable and perhaps even joyous.
Ponder Question: What do you do when hard things happen? How can you help someone get through a challenging time?
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