Fire!

A wildfire raged from Thursday to Saturday, beginning somewhere near Newbury Park and burning its way to the ocean.  No homes or lives were lost, thankfully.  Thousands, however, were evacuated.  One set of sister missionaries in Newbury Park were among those on Thursday.  They were able to return to their apartment that evening.  President Castro had a baptism interview in Newbury Park that day.  He said the stake center was filled with evacuees, watching the fate of their homes on the news.  It was a great blessing that all turned out okay.

Here in Oxnard we saw lots of smoke.  Elder Mecham got this picture (not a good one) Friday morning when he and Elder Truman left early to go up the coast (5:30a).  This was taken from Victoria road, for those of you who have been here and can remember the main road from our apartment clear up into Ventura and to the freeway.  So the fire was really quite close, although never a threat to Oxnard or Ventura.

Thursday morning, Elders Mecham and Truman transported an elder to LAX and were delayed quite some time because of the fire.  Unfortunately, Elder Mecham did not have the camera -- he said the fire was right along the freeway, although not raging at that point.  Today, Sunday, we heard the fire is 60 percent contained.  Later - someday - we will go take pictures of where the fire was.  Wow - so early in the year for bad fires :(