Both Brad and Tim are on call right now with work for forestry fire fighting. At anytime they could get called and have to be somewhere within hours. So going to Vancouver was a bit of a risk but we figured we would be ok. Earlier yesterday morning Tim had recieved an email saying that they won't be called out this week so we figured we were pretty safe and just hoped that Brad wouldn't get called either. Well, littereally as we got onto the Portmann Bridge to go enter into Vancouver Tim gets a call. By what he was saying we could tell it was work. Turns out he needed to be in Barrier are 7 am today! Therefore we would have to be home by 4:30 am at the latest so he could drive to Barrier which is 2 hours away.
Originally, when we decided to come down we had planned to say over in Chiliwack and spend more time down in the city after the game. I was a little nervous but I had thought we would be ok. When Tim had said he had to be in Barrier at 7 I said, "Maybe God is using this to protect us from the crazieness that will go on." Because if it were up to me I would have left right when the game ended, but Brad and Tim had wanted to stick around.
When we got there the energy was great! Everyone was so pumped and couldn't wait for the game. There were hundreds of thousands of people. So we pushed our way up near the front by the screen. The game began and all went down hill from there! Probably at the end of the second period I kept hearing people says "Let's Riot!" "Let's get this riot started!" and other things like that. You could tell that it was what people wanted to do. There was so much drinking and drugs too. I know the news keeps saying it wasn't the fans who were rioting or it was criminals and anarchists, but I have to disagree with that. You could just tell that so many people, fans included, just wanted to riot.
I was starting to feel a little nervous and since we wanted to leave at a decent time we started heading out of the middle of the crowd. We saw a couple fights starting too and there were hooligans climbing up on street lights. That was kind of funny because they had no way of not getting caught. The second they got off the poles the police arrested them! Way to be super stupid people! Well there was probably 7 min. left in the 3rd period and we decided to head out as the outcome of the game was obvious. As we were leaving there were more fights breaking out by the porta poties. We got to our car and left in good time. Thankfully we left before basically everyone so we had no traffic and just sailed out fine.
As we were driving away I said "HEY! There is black smoke!", as a huge plume rose from between buildings. Oh I was SO happy we had left. Brad and Tim were sad because they wanted to see what was going on, but I was SO happy and above all SO thankful to the Lord! I know God used Tim's work to protect us.
As we were driving away I was so thankful to God for getting us out of there just before things went really crazy. Today I have been watching a lot of clips of the riots. I found this one below and it proved to me even more how God was protecting us. After the first few second of the fire in this video it shows the street with a car and people rioting and police. Between two buildings on the left is a parking lot that you can see and a car that people have smashed. Well we had parked in that parking lot!!!! Crazy hey? We parked right beside the road too, which was maybe a little stupid but whatever. If we had stuck around I don't think we would have got my poor little car out of there in one peice. Then in the same video, after it shows the street where we were parked it shows a street with a couple fires on it, well that is exactly where we had been standing! How great is our God! I'm so thankful for his protection.
So overall it was a great expierience for us, since we left at a good time. The drive home felt like forever though, since we were so tired. I feel really bad for Tim he got basically no sleep and now he has to work in the bush for who knows how long! Here are a couple pictures too.
Shows how many people there were!
This is how squished we were in the crowd.
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