Fire and Fireflies

First of all, let me say that we are all okay, but there was a fire at our hotel on Sunday night.

Earlier that evening, we had eaten dinner at the mall food court with about six other families who are adopting in Uganda.  The Brown family of Midland, Texas was part of that gathering.  See photo below:  left side of table (Annie, Allison, and A.J. Brown) and right side of table (Joshua and Jennifer Gash with Abby Claire Brown).

The Brown and Gash kids having dinner at food court

After dinner, we did some quick grocery shopping and drove home.  Upon arrival at our hotel, the guard told us we were not allowed to go to our rooms, and we would need to wait by the hotel pool, because there had been an explosion.  Really, an explosion?

Once we gathered by the pool, we could clearly see there was a fire in one of the hotel rooms on the third floor in the building next to our building.  The orange flames were actually shooting out the window.  Why isn’t the fire department here yet?  Is there a fire department?  Why weren’t the hotel workers doing anything to put out the fire?  We soon found out that the hotel fire hoses were not working, so the workers started gathering all the fire extinguishers from the hallways to try to put out the fire.  About this time, all the power was shut off to the hotel.  We had no idea why.  Maybe they thought it would prevent an electrical fire.  Then a hotel worker named Faith walked over to check on us and told us she had been the first one on the scene.  According to Faith, a hotel guest had been burned while cooking at the gas stove in her room, which they think might have “exploded.”  Apparently, the fire had spread quickly throughout the room.  The woman and her husband, who was burned while helping his wife, were being taken to the hospital.

We watched the flames die down as the workers used up several fire extinguishers.  Eventually, the orange glow from the hotel room window ceased and the fire department finally showed up.  They arrived just in time to splash some water around the room and make sure the fire was out.  So, we felt like we could relax a little as we waited in the dark for the power to come back on.

Burned hotel room the next morning

We couldn’t really do anything in our rooms until we had power anyway.  So the kids ran around on the lawn in the dark, and A.J. (the Browns’ 12 year old son) caught a firefly and brought it over to show everyone.  It was the first time that the kids had seen a firefly up close.  I guess watching the firefly glow reminded Holly that she had put some glow sticks in Moses’ backpack.  So we got out the glow sticks and the kids ran around and threw them up in the air and were having a great time.  Moses (the 2 ½ year old the Browns are adopting) especially liked running around with the big kids, and threw his green glow stick up in the air too.  Allison (the Browns’ 17 year old) was telling us how you can use a long-exposure setting on a camera and take really cool photos with glow sticks.  So I got out my camera and Allison set it up.

Here are some of the images Allison captured before the power came back on.

Kids used glow sticks to spell out "love" - the green line was made by Moses

Fun with glow sticks!

Annie and Moses surrounded by glow stick lights

What started out as a kind of scary night, turned out to be a fun night for our kids.  Since we had to wait outside and it was completely dark, the kids discovered the beauty of fireflies and new tricks with glow sticks.  It reminds me that God can bring good out of a bad situation.