Saturday morning I slept a little late, got up, did a few things upstairs and then headed to the main level. As I walked down the stairs, the smell of something burning hit me. Kolya has a wood burning set, so I thought he had it out doing a project.
Rounding the corner to the family room, I found Kolya sitting on the couch watching television. “Did you use your wood-burning set this morning?” I asked. “No,” He responded, “but I did just start to smell something burning.”
Mark was working, but Austin and Erica joined Kolya and I as we went all through the house trying to figure out what was burning. After 40 minutes and with the smell intensifying, I decided to call the non-emergency number for the fire dept. “I didn’t want to call 911 because we don’t have a fire, but we have a pretty intense burning smell. Could you help us figure it out?” I asked.
Pretty soon we had two firetrucks and more than a dozen firefighters descend upon our house. They smelled it immediately when they walked in and started asking questions and investigating. After an hour, they checked every wall and could not find any evidence that we had an electrical fire in the wall somewhere. Even though the furnace didn’t smell at all, they suggested we call someone to look at the furnace. Sure enough, the electrical board of the furnace had burned…but the furnace was still working!
You know me…I think every life experience is a learning opportunity! Here’s what I learned from our “fire incident” on Saturday:
1) Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Sometimes you need to call in someone who knows more than you do. When the fireman carried in a thermal detector and started scanning our walls, I knew I had done the right thing. They had tools to investigate better than we did on our own.
2) Always put your underwear away in your bedroom. 🙂 I guess this is along the lines of why your mom told to you always wear clean underwear! When I led the firemen through the house and entered our bedroom, I was mortified to find my underwear laying on the floor. Oh my! Someone might be in your house even if you weren’t planning on having company!
3) Prepare for emergencies. This caused our family to talk about a fire escape plan and it launched an interesting discussion about what we would grab if there were a real fire. I was recently on Pinterest and pinned an emergency kit that was one notebook that contains all your important documents. Currently our important documents are in a file cabinet which would be a little hard to lug out the door in an emergency!
4) Pray. When we couldn’t easily determine what was burning, I began to pray. “Lord, show us what we cannot see. Give us wisdom. Point us in the right direction.” Prayer needs to be our first thought…not our last. What a peace it was to be searching for this with Jesus by my side.
What about you? Have you ever had an emergency that you learned a lesson or two from?
Glad everything turned out ok and that you were able to learn something from it. I, too, had a “fire” experience before and I learned to never walk out of a room without blowing out any candles ( I was 12, but never forgotten the damage to my dresser and shelf).
Hi Jill,
A few months ago, my husband was on a hunting trip for the weekend. My son and I were up at about 11:00PM watching a movie and kept hearing a noise coming from his bedroom. We live on a large piece of land, so we are use to critters being around and I was convinced that we had a critter in the wall scratching. We had a snake in our house last summer, and so I’m a little freaked out by noises. I finally called the police and asked if someone could come check it out. (I know, it was overkill but I was scared!) So, the policeman showed up, walked down into my son’s room and didn’t see anything. He turned around and looked at my son’s
stereo and said “I think your son needs to turn the volume of the speakers down”. He then reached over and shut the power off and the sound went away! My son had been listening to a cassette tape earlier that day and hadn’t turned the volume down. Talk about embarrassing! I think the cop was relieved that he didn’t have to fight an animal though! My husband laughed and laughed at me after that! So, I learned to turn the stereo off! Haha!
Too funny, Nichole!
Jill – the best part of this whole post was knowing that someone as put-together as you would have to warn us to put up our underwear… because of your personal experience. HA! Made me LOL. Thanks for the tips! I am working on a notebook for my family, and I will definitely be looking into the pin you suggested. =)
Made me smile.
I would be horrified of someone walked into my house right now! Need to get my hinny in gear 😉
LOL!!!
In case of any emergency, at home or while we are away, I have a file containing all our financial information and have sent it to myself at an email I can access from anywhere, like gmail or hotmail. This file contains all our insurance account numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers and all the phone numbers that go along with it. I update it annually to catch any changes. I’m thinking I will also take a few photos of our home and email those to myself as well, in case of fire or water damage. If you are leary about internet security, make a hard copy of that file and give it to a trusted family member or friend in a sealed envelope and ask they put it in their safe or safe place.
Great ideas Karla!
I’m thinking this story might come up again at Hearts conference. It is one of the few things I am looking forward to this time of year. It’s so blah after Christmas is over, kind of a let down. I always wish time would stop on Dec 10–anticipations are high, most people are in a good mood, the decorations are so pretty. Just so we don’t put away Christ as we take them all down. Hope you’re doing well!
#2. It’s a place where the fire is not quenched and the worm does not die. The worm described here is a soul that is not cleansed by the blood of Jesus. The fire will not be quenched simply means that it will burn forever, without ever consuming the worm. Remember the burning bush? It was on fire but yet the fire did not consume the bush. It is a fire that will be seven times hotter than any flame known to man. They say that a blue flame is the hottest flame, hotter than the red, orange and yellow flames, which is a campfire compared to the blaze that is going on in hell right now!