From Mom, Housefire

I'm back.

We had a Christmas miracle early Sat morning. We had gone to bed late on Friday, about 11:30 and I was so tired from the week of 5:00 am wake ups for Seminary. I tell you this to make it clear how deeply asleep I really was. Just after 1:00 am, I woke up suddenly and completely because I thought someone had been speaking to me. And I could smell a faint burning odor. So
I got up and went all over the house, the garage and out the back sliding door to see where the smell was coming from, but couldn't discover anything. I began to doubt my nose so I woke Scott up to see if he could smell it too, and he said he could. So I went over the whole house again, and everything checked out. I thought I would check the air out the front of the house. I opened the front door; the timing box for the Christmas lights was a puddle of smoking plastic, and the siding of the house was on fire, and the framing along the foundation was glowing embers.

Dad was a trooper. He ran and got the garden hose out, and after pulling out what was left of the cord from the wall, he had it pretty much out by the time the fire truck arrived. The firemen said we were pretty lucky-a few more minutes and we would have had a major fire. They had this amazing heat sensing camera that sees through walls and floors, and registers the actual temperature. It was cool, you could see the framing had started to heat up. After they made sure there were no more hot spots (about an hour)they left. They said it was amazing that I woke up so quickly, that most fires that begin on the outside do a lot more damage before they are discovered.

We got back to bed after 4:00, after a heartfelt prayer of thanks for God's tender mercy in waking me in time to avert a disaster. The Lord has been protecting us from fire lately. Remember on the 4th of July when we left the garbage can on the front walkway? I was going to tell you to put it at the side of the house, but then thought it would be fine there over night.
Thank the Lord, literally, that you and Dad left it out, and I thought better of asking you to put it away. God is good!

I'll send this, then write a little more

Mom