Church & a Fire

For the past couple of weeks, Jim & I have been attending the Oakland Christian Church with some friends of our, Joe & Val, who are members of the Church. It has truly been an enlightening experience as well as very uplifting. And today was no exception. The pastor's son just returned from Hiati on a mission & today he preached about the healing powers of God. The pastor told everyone to turn to the person next to you & say a prayer for them. In front of Jim was a very tall, nice-looking black man that prayed for Jim. I had no clue who he was, but then Jim turned to me afterwards & said "I think that was Herman Moore, the former wide receiver for the Detroit Lions." And sure enough, Val confirmed that it was. After the service, we went out into the front of the Church & I thanked Herman for praying for us. It was truly a pleasure meeting him & shaking his hand.

Today, Jim & I get to go to Home Depot to purchase a new stove for the house.....fun, fun! Yes, we're just renting this house & the owners just put all new appliances in back in June, so you may be wondering why we're purchasing a new stove, right? Well, let me tell you, it wasn't planned! Last Friday, Jim & I were starting dinner & I turned on the stove to preheat it. He then went into the living room & I went upstairs to finish drying my hair. When I returned less than 5 minutes later, I saw smoke coming out of the vent of the stove. The night before, Jim put the plastic box that had the rest of my birthday cake inside the stove & forgot about it being in there. When we opened the door to the oven, Jim was able to get the cake & rack out of the stove & took it outside, but there was a small fire inside the stove. Needless to say, I panicked, having been through an apartment fire several years ago where I lost everything I owned! I remembered that I saw a fire extinquisher outside in the garage, so I ran out to get it & called 911. The lady was very calm & walked us through using the fire extinquisher, since neither Jim nor I have ever used one before. We got the fire out, so we didn't need them to send any fire trucks thank God. But in the process, we found out that we've basically ruined the stove because the fire extinquisher that we used was an ABC extinquisher & apparently, the A chemical will corrode things & can also contaminate your food. And even though we cleaned the stove as much as we could, there is still some of the powder from the extinquisher in the cracks of the stove that we can't get out :( Yes, we could probably pay an appliance repair person to come out & look at it, but they charge you an arm & a leg just for the service call! And that's no guarantee that they can even do anything with it! Yesterday, we decided to turn the oven on just to see if anything would happen. After less than a minute, it started smoking like crazy & smelled really bad! Sooooo......that's why we're buying a new stove today. Like I said, fun, fun! NOT! Ah well, live & learn, I guess. And now we also need to buy a new fire extinquisher, but it won't be an ABC one!

If you've made it this far, take it from me.....have a fire extinquisher on hand in your kitchen because you just never know when something like this could happen to you! And ALWAYS check to see if there's anything inside your oven BEFORE you turn it on! The funny part about that is, we never even used to store anything in our oven (except for maybe brownies when they were still in the pan) & now I will NEVER store anything in there again! Lesson learned! And an expensive one at that!

Have a great Sunday,
Benita