Thank You, God, For Good Timing!

From the Pastor:    Thank You, God, For Good Timing!

       Last weekend was quite different than I had expected, all because of a little issue with (or, rather, without) water. It all started sometime Friday afternoon. We had water shortly after noon when I was washing my lunch dishes. But sometime later that afternoon Fr. Dorvil announced that there was no water coming out of the kitchen faucet. A quick check showed that the entire rectory was without water. I walked to the school. No water there. I checked the church. Again, no water. We don’t know when it went out but we had the JMJ homeschool group here until at least two o’clock and never heard any complaints from them so we assume it was sometime after they left. As I walked back out of the church I heard the sound of cars out front driving through water, which would have been a normal noise had it been raining, but such was not the case. I walked out there to see water gushing out from under the sidewalk outside of our fence. The water was coming from both sides of the slab of concrete with enough force that it was actually pushed up higher than the other adjoining sections and running out onto Hanna Avenue down toward the train tracks. I quickly went back to the rectory and called the water department to report a water main break. The woman on the other end of the phone line said that since it was gushing from under the city sidewalk next to the street, she would put it in as an emergency and a repair truck would be there shortly. A couple of hours later the city repairman got there and, after a long search, finally found the water shutoff valve and meter box under the water in the small strip between the sidewalk and the street. He siphoned the water out of the newly made holes and dug the mud out to reveal the water pipe. Then he gave me the bad news. Even though the broken pipe was obviously outside of our property boundaries, because it was on our side of the meter box, it was our problem to deal with, not the city’s. He was sympathetic to our predicament as he had been watching all of the cars coming in to drop off teens for our youth group meeting. When he heard that our weekend schedule included Saturday morning Mass, Adult Catechism Class, baptisms and another evening Mass, and then another 800 or more people coming in for Sunday Masses and activities, he called his supervisor and asked him to come and see if they could do anything for us. The supervisor did come by a while later but he answer was, “Sorry, but we can’t help you. You’ll have to call your own plumber”
       I put in a call and left a message with Dyser Plumbing, the best plumbing company I have had the pleasure of dealing with as a priest. Then I sent out a text message and email via Flocknote warning people that we had no water anywhere on campus. I canceled the class but not the Masses and left the baptisms up to the parents. Mr. Dyser called back and apologized that he had allowed his “extra”  plumbers to take some vacation time after a long, hard holiday season and had nobody to send. (Mr. Dyser also called again Sunday morning apologizing for “letting us down” and offering to make it up to us. He really is a great man and certainly didn’t let us down by taking care of his employees.) By Saturday morning parishioners were in motion doing things that needed to be done. We had people calling plumbers everywhere from Dade City to Sun City Center, yet none could be found to come to our assistance. Several people managed to find porta-potty companies that could deliver a couple on short notice so that we would at least have minimal toilet facilities before the Vigil Mass began. A plumber (Emory of Emory M. Garland Plumbing, who turned out to be another delightful Christian plumber willing to go the extra mile to get our water running again before Sunday “services”) was finally found by one of our contractors, who also came out with one of his men to cut through the sidewalk to get to the pipe. It turns out that the sidewalk was a fresh slab of concrete put down by the city after they changed the connection of our water pipes to a new meter and a new connection to their water main when they were doing work on the system while putting in the new City Center across the street. It was their newly installed pipe that snapped. We will see if they can reimburse us for our expenses since it seems they installed that section of pipe improperly.
       Meanwhile, another parishioner brought about twenty five-gallon buckets filled with water so that we could flush toilets if needed on Sunday. The Knights of Columbus, without their knowledge, were going to refill the buckets from Epiphany Arms next door as needed. Other parishioners offered meals for the priests if needed. The coffee and donut people had to cancel our donut order because the deadline came before the plumber did. The website got updates on the progress, as did our farcebook page and flocknote. More people did more things than I could have ever imagined. Thank you all.
       Finally, about 5:45 am Sunday morning, I turned on the water, flushed out the pipes, and everything held together! But that is not why I titled this column “Thank You, God, For Good Timing!” Just imagine what would have happened if the pipe burst just one week earlier!

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka

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