Sister Katelyn Blood: June 2015

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

The Untimely Demise of The Beast

From Sister Wendy Blog, she was the Sister driving Katelyn and her Companion

WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 2015

The Untimely Demise of The Beast

What a life it had. Abused and tortured by previous owners, slowly and painstakingly put back together with salvage parts, only to meet a tragic, violent end.

I had the opportunity Saturday to take a couple of cute missionaries from my church to an appointment. It has been raining more days than not for most of the month. Saturday morning it alternated between fine mist and rain. Thanks to previous damage around the passenger door, the Tracker leaks in the rain. But, we loaded everyone in the car, so glad to have a functioning back seat, and headed across town. The streets were wet, but nothing too bad. Many of the roads here do not have center turning lanes, just two lanes each direction, nothing in the middle, and not much on the sides. We signaled and stopped in the left lane, attempting to make a left turn off of the main road. Traffic was a little heavy, being lunch time on Saturday (not to mention a holiday weekend). While peacefully waiting for traffic to clear enough to safely make the left turn we heard a loud bang.

I've made it approximately half-way through my life without having anything more than a fender bender. So what happened next was definitely a new experience. After the bang, everything went into a dream-like slow motion. We started to move, turning a little to the left, and we started to tip towards the passenger side. In the confusion, I wondered if we were going to tip over. We quickly came to a stop and the two "girls" (they seem so young these days) started to ask if everyone was all right. I stopped, took a breath, assessed my physical situation, and determined that I was not injured. That's when I smelled the gas and moved into evacuation mode. I told the girls we needed to get out, but they couldn't get the passenger door open. I got the passenger door open from the outside, and got both girls safely out (though the one in the back had to climb over the seats because I couldn't get either one to slide forward). Thankfully, several fellow travelers had stopped to help the girls and provide witness statements. Both girls were transported to the hospital with minor injuries and released within a few hours. I'm sure their bodies will heal faster than their minds.

We always talk about the missionaries being protected by angels and I wondered why they didn't have more protection that day. Then we went to look at the Tracker.

She hit us on the rear passenger side of the car. It broke the rear window, ruptured the gas tank, and slashed the tire. She wasn't paying attention to the road and probably didn't brake before impact. The force of the collision pushed us halfway through the intended turn into on-coming traffic. I don't know how, but they must of seen the accident coming, because where I had seen no break to turn, there was space for us to stop and no one came close to hitting us. Some how the on-coming traffic all went around us or stopped five to ten feet in front of us. I don't even remember hearing any squealing tires.

Its hard to see from the full shot of the back end just how far things were smashed in, but when you look at the area around the filler cap for the gas tank, you can see that she did push the back end in pretty far.

This is where I started to get nervous. A year and a half ago we replaced the back floor pan and added a reinforcing bar to help support the seat. The force was enough that what was a straight seat is now bent. This would be on the left side of the rear passenger.

I'm sad this picture didn't turn out better. This is a shot in between the front and rear seats at the hump behind the center console. The brown line in the middle of the picture is where the metal has been ripped apart and you can see the ground below the tracker. So, my poor rear passenger had the car torn apart behind her, glass falling around her, torn apart beside her, resting above spilling gasoline and unknown damage, and torn metal at her feet. She was very shaken up, but walked away with a lot of sore muscles, a few cuts, and many bruises. I've decided that the angels protecting her must have been working over time. Its a good thing they all took Sunday off and spent most of their day in the apartment. I don't know, can angels get bruises?

This is what the offending car looked like.

I always suspected that the Tracker would go out with a final story, I just assumed that is would be due to a failing part. After all, a car with nicknames like The Black Cactus, The Rocking Squirrel, The Beast, Lucifer, FrankenTracker, and a few others has to have a story. And after the epic "brake" failure and other horrifying discovers, it just couldn't go quietly. Its a good reminder that cell phones and cars don't mix, and Heavenly Father will protect his children.

Week after the accident

Dear Family and Friends, 6-2-15

This was a good week! It started out slow with recovering from the accident on Saturday but each day we did more and achieved more! Yesterday was one of the best days and I spent almost the entire day on splits because my companion was sick, but it was a good day and we saw a lot of miracles! The best part was being able to have a really good heart to heart with Aide, and I even got her to come hang out with me and be my companion instead of going with her "friends" who are trying to get her back into bad stuff. The ward loves her so much and we are fighting like lions to keep her active and safe, as we keep reaching out we pray she will feel and see how much the ward actually does care about her! It was weird not having Sister Williams with me but it provided a really neat opportunity for her to open up to me and for me to share some things from my own life that helped her to see I do relate to her and some of the things she is going through.
The end of the week really lifted my spirits and helped me to feel the power and joy that comes from missionary work! Amazing miracle of the week was finding Marva. She was an investigator I taught in Harrison park who almost got baptized but them moved to Andover. Since I have been in Andover I have been thinking a lot about her and wondering if I could somehow find her house again. Crazy thing is she now lives next door to our investigator Brenda! It was a joyful reunion that fill me with so much happiness! She only has a few months left to live because of Stomach cancer, but the Lord provided a way for us to meet again before she leaves this life, he is wonderful.

We were at the hospital until 1:30 last night because we were worried about Sister Williams having a blood clot because of the nature of the pain in her leg, but after spending way too long in the ER waiting room we finally went back they ran some tests and scans and found that she was fine, so we went home and crashed at about 2am just to get up as always at 6:30, I don't feel too tired right now, but I am sure it will come on with full force later today or tomorrow, haha.

So I had a recording I was going to include about the events of last week... but the computer can't find the driver for the recorder so I can't get to the file. So the next best thing is I will include the like to the blog of the member who was driving, she did a nice job about talking about the accident and the likes so that should be fun to read. The link is http://wejulaar.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-untimely-demise-of-beast.html For those of you who can't open the blog I will include a picture as well. The back break light is one of the things I find most entertaining because it is bent down because I smacked my head into it, knowing what I hit it on explained why I had such a large goose egg on the back of my head and why it was bleeding. Angels were for sure watching out for us! Another miracle of the accident she didn't mention in the blog is that Sister Williams airbag should have gone off but it didn't which is amazing because of her seat coming off the hinges and sliding forward it put her only three or so inches from where the airbag is, which if it had gone off could have been pretty serious. They also told us when you looked at the underside of the frame the entire steel structure had been bent into an "L" shape because of the force of the impact, it kind of blows my mind how much we are protected! The gray car is the one belonging to the lady who hit us.

Really cool part of the week is that for the third time in KWM history the entire mission gathered so that Elder Don Clark of the 70 and head of the mission department could talk to us about the why of the proper use of digital technology since we will be getting iPads to aid in the work of salvation here in Kansas in the next few weeks. It was AMAZING! He is a really good speaker; he talked to us a lot about how learning how to balance and use technology properly in our lives now will bless us when we are home for the rest of our lives. He also talked a lot about marriage and how to avoid Divorce, which can be caused by misuse of technology. He actually talked to us over an hour past when he was supposed to, but it was such good advice and he was letting us ask questions I didn't want it to end!

Thank you again to everyone that has kept us in your prayers, we are healing fast and getting back into the swing of missionary life in full force again!

Love to you all!

Sister Blood