What To Save

When you get bored have you ever played those thinking games…if you could take only 5 things to a deserted island, what would they be? Or if you could save only one thing from a burning house, what would it be? For me, I’ve only ever had to think of those as a game, not a real life scenario. Until a couple weeks ago.

There was a really bad fire in one of the houses a couple blocks over. Like really bad. There are no fire hydrants but three firetrucks did show up before the fire was out.

What we saw from our roof.

I’ve never even seen a house burn in real life and I’ve never really had to worry about a fire burning in real life. Especially my house. But when we first saw the smoke, we wondered if we should be concerned about it somehow moving over to our house – especially since we didn’t know how Albanian put out fires.

Normally it wouldn’t be a big deal because we’d just hang around the house. But it was 3:30pm and we were getting ready to go to Tirana and wouldn’t return until midnight. So we weren’t sure if we should be concerned or not since if something did happen, we wouldn’t be around to do anything. We decided we would leave some stuff at a friends house – just in case.

(Looking back, we probably over reacted but better safe than sorry right?)

Now I actually had to decide. What is worth saving. I only had a few minutes. I gathered up my passport, other legal documents and money. I also packed my camera bag quickly with the essentials since I knew I would be going to the Czech taking just what I would need for that. I also took my hard drives with all my work and my computer (of course*).

As far as I know, the fire didn’t go past the original house. But now I know. At this point in my life, if my house caught on fire, these are the things I would take.

*Don’t judge me for not having my Bible make the cut. I promise I’m a good missionary! I use the Bible on my ipod regularly which I was taking with me to Tirana (and usually have with me anyway).