Week 6- Breaking News: El terremoto que destruye Chile

I want you to imagine for a minute living in a different continent from your sister, and not knowing if she is dead or alive. This is how I felt on February27, 2010 when I heard about the 8.8 earthquake that hit Chile. My sister and my best friend is on a mission in Chile, and she was in Concepcion when the earthquake hit.

Early on Saturday morning, the phone rang. I didn't think anything of it, and fell back asleep. I woke up again to the sound of my mother crying. But it wasn't just crying. I had never heard anything like it before. It was like a mix between sobbing and screeching. She sounded like she was in incredible pain. I can't even begin to describe it. I was scared to see her, so I stayed in bed. A few minutes later, my dad called me from the road. He had heard on the news that the earthquake had hit, and he wanted me to take care of my mom because she was in a bad way. I went downstairs and found her on her knees in front of the tv. She was frozen there, watching buildings on fire and falling, the roads being thrown up in the air, people running and falling and dying. Her whole body was racked with spasms as she cried. I put my arms around her from behind and stroked her hair and told her everything would be ok as together we cried for Chile and for my sister and watched the horrible destruction from the quake.

I stayed on the computer most of the day, watching streamed news from Chile. I had to translate from Spanish for my mom. I emailed Alisa (my sister), the mission home, several members of her ward, other missionaries, and some official people in Chile. I was on a US Government site that had the latest updates and information on American Citizens living in Chile. I called church headquarters in Salt Lake to try and get any information on my sister. But all forms of communication in Chile were down, and my family had no way to know if my sister was alive or not.

The members of my ward treated my family very well that day. They brought us food, sent us flowers, called to check on us. Everyone told us to just have faith that my sister would be ok, but we had a hard time hearing that. Faith without works is dead. If no one was doing anything for my sister, how could we have faith? This was quite a trial of my family's faith. Our RS president brought us In'N'Out for dinner. On the bottom of the cup was the scripture reference for "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." It was quite humbling and helped us to feel better.

For about a week we still had no idea if my sister was alive. We heard more about the destruction and the death. There were over 200 aftershocks that were bigger than the Haiti earthquake. It was a stressful week.

I was sitting in class on Friday afternoon when I got an email from my sister. All it said was "Morgee, have dad call me as soon as possible. I love you." She gave me a phone number and I left school so I could find my dad to call my sister. How good it was to hear her voice! We cried and cried and cried. She was so scared and it made us sad. She told us all about the night the earthquake hit and everything she and her companion had to do.

It was too dangerous for them to leave the house, so they stayed inside for weeks. They had no food, and no running water. She ended up not showering for over three weeks. It was a hard time for all of us, but it was definitely an incredible, humbling, and faith building experience. One thing this experience taught me was to not take anything for granted, especially my sister. I could not live without her, and I don't ever want to have that feeling of not knowing if she is alive again.