Missionaries are Protected!

Below is a letter from a Missionary in Chile, sent to his parents (my boss and his wife) after the earthquake in Chile. Humbling and comforting to know that our missionaries are divinely protected.

Family,

It´s 3:30 A.M. the 27th of February 2010. The annual Festival de Viña (AKA drug, sex and rock n´roll/sinfest) has just finished. I wake up to a weird noise. I look up at the ceiling and see it moving as if I was playing with a piece of Jello on my fork. EARTHQUAKE!!! I jump out of bed and run out the sliding door to the deck to make sure that there is nothing over my head. I look out across Viña and see on the other side of the hill explosions everywhere and then the next second the light in the whole city goes out. It is just pitch black everywhere. For about 30 seconds the earth sounds like a bunch of slamming doors. After, the air is polluted by the noise of car alarms throughout the entire city, gangsters yelling and whistling to each other and the sound of frightened drunks that have procrastinated the day of their repentance. We climb back in bed when soon after we hear the phone in our room ringing. My companion Elder Albrecht answers the phone to President Gillespie´s voice saying that he is on his way up. We all throw our clothes on and go out to meet him. We try calling the zone leaders but our phones arent working so he tells us that we will have to divide and conquer to make sure all of the missionaries in the mission are fine. Elder Reid, Elder Adams and I hop in the truck and we start of for Valparaíso. Ok, remember how I said that the "Eat, drink and be merryfest" just ended? Everybody was out driving and there was absolutely no power in the whole city. So here we are driving around going through intersections trying to dodge people, dogs and cars with none of the traffic lights working and with it being pitch black everywhere our headlights aren´t. We drive along the coast from Viña to Valpo which was the most amazing sight. All that could be seen was the outline of the enormously steep hills of Valpo meeting the sky and the water´s edge with the giant orange moons reflection on the harbor full of boats. As we come around the corner, it looks like we are just driving into an huge dungeon of darkness. The only thing we see are cars here and there driving around in the hills. We enter into Valpo and see debris all over the sidewalks from walls of buildings that had fallen from stories above and crushed to pieces all over. There are fallen power-lines hanging down in the roads so we have to juke those everywhere. We pick up the zone leaders from Valpo Oeste and have them take us around to all the missionaries in their zone to make sure that they were all ok. Everyone is fine so we go over to the other zone leaders house. They live on the 8th floor so we run up and the whole way up we just see cracked walls and fallen light fixtures everywhere. Huge chunks had fallen out of the walls and entire walls were just laying on the ground. We get up to the their apartment and it looks like a tornado had swept through it. Imagine a house full of mission materials, books of mormon, pamphlets, give-away cards, personal scriptures and everything in between. Now imagine that spread all over the floor. haha It was hilarious! haha A closet full of clothes had fallen over and all the tiles in the bathroom had been shaken loose and were laying all over in the tub. That pension was so stinking dirty and unorganized I couldn´t help but laugh. So we go around with these zone leaders to all of their missionaries as well and thankfully the earthquake didnt cause any damage to them. So we head back to our apartment and shower up. Our apartment building is amazing. We were probably the only people in Viña that had hot water and light. Almost nothing happened to the building except a few pieces of stucco fell off at the very top. Not even our iron fell off the ironing board. The only thing that I realized had fallen over was my water bottle in the fridge but literally everything else was fine. Then we went down to the office and it looked like a bomb had gone off in there. All of the drawers of the cabinets had opened and fallen over. Our big printer was just in pieces all over the ground but Elder Adams, el computín (computer geek), put it back together and now it works kind of. Every single picture had fallen off the wall except the pictures of Jesus Christ. They hadn´t even been touched at all. For the rest of that day and even until now we have been having aftershocks all the time but nothing to big. We were without electricity until Monday night. All the grocery stores were closed down. They shut the water off throughout the whole city for a few days. It was weird cause that was the first time in my life when I was literally starving. We had no food or back-up water in the office. There was nowhere to buy any food or anything. For 3 days I turned into a scavenging beast looking for food but to no avail. It was weird to think that I was suffering from the effects of a natural disaster and was literally starving and thirsting. I learned a lot from this experience. I learned how much we take for granted on a daily or even hourly or minutely basis. It was miserable without light or water. I´m so thankful for this experience I have had to go through this catastrophe. It has been a really humbling experience and has taught me that living the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the most important thing in life. I love this church and am so thankful for all that it teaches us. I´m grateful for the priesthood and the hope that it brings into this life. I love you all and I pray for you often. Thank you for your love and support. Just so you all know, our mission was not effected at all like Concepción was. Valparaíso was hit pretty bad but there was only a few deaths there. There were no tsunamis or anything. It was pretty crazy when it happened but we didnt get it very bad. There was a pretty eerie feeling of confusion throughout the rest of the weekend though. It was a great experience and am thankful to have been through it.

Elder Owen

I loved his account on his experiences with the earthquake. I had to share what I thought was truly a miracle. I know that Elder Laws will be protected and cared for. He is doing the lords work and that gives me comfort knowing that the Lord is watching over him.

Roni Laws