Have you ever tried to stand on a blow-up raft in the middle of a swimming pool? It’s pretty difficult. That’s what it felt like as some of my friends and I stood in the middle of the road as the city rocked from it’s biggest earthquake in seventy years. People started to flood out onto the road from every building as we all stood with jello legs for the minute and a half that the earthquake lasted. What a strange feeling it was to be looking at the ground and while staring at a single spot on the ground and watch it just move 4 inches to the left and then just drop and come back up and move all around.
It has definitely been an experience these past 5 days. Stories I’m going to remember for a long time have happen: like seeing 30,000 students camping out on a soccer and all around campus in tents and under tarps because they are to afraid to sleep in there dorms, watching every single store sell out of everything drinkable cause there was a rumor that there wasn’t going to be water on in the city for a week (turned out to be only a few hours), or waking up in the middle of the night when one of the hundreds of aftershocks gently shook my room.
Besides all the stories I have had a growing sense of sadness about everything that has happened. I remember a few years ago with the tsunami in Indonesia that although I felt sad it didn’t really affect me. But this kind of reminds me of Sept. 11. Even though I didn’t know anyone that was hurt it still hurt me and touched something inside of me that I didn’t know was there. That’s the way I feel when I see the pictures on the web of families weeping over their kids that all died less than 60 miles from where I sit right now. I realize that it’s not only there child but also everything that they stand for: hope, stability, a better life…. and all of this happened right outside of MY city.
Feeling this way I know that this has not only affected the families that live in the hills where the earthquakes have hit the worst but every single person that walks the street. As my time here comes to an end I realize that people’s hearts are opened. I feel like even though too many people are dead that good things always come out of bad situations. The good in this situation is that the seeds that have been planted or are going to be planted in the next week are going to hit a little nicer soil. People are always searching but when the questions of fear and death look them in the face they often look a little harder.
I know that God has let this all happen for a reason and because I know who He is I also know that He can turn any situation or person from death to life in a second. That is why I am excited to be here now. God is doing greater things then I can ever imagine and I am just happy that He let’s me be a part of it.