03-01-10

Hope that all of you are doing well. I am doing great.

So about the earthquake, haha. I guess it was like a 5 or 6 here where I am. The epicenter was in Conception, which is north of us. It was a 9 there, which is big. The day before we had intercambios with the zone leaders, and I stayed here in San Pablo with one of them. It was sooo hot and sunny this day, and we walked and taught all the day long. When we got back to the house we were dead tired. When I got to bed I was exhausted beyond belief.

At about 4 AM, I remember waking up, in a half awake state. My bed was rocking back and forth a lot, and the thought that went through my mind was, oh, must be an earthquake, but it will just be a little one and it will stop soon. And with my bed rocking back and forth, I fell back asleep for 1 or two minutes, I guess. The earthquake here lasted like 2 minutes, and I woke up again for the last 5 seconds of it. Which when I was conscious felt like I was riding my bed through the ocean. And then it stopped, and I woke up my zone leader, and he had slept though all of it. And then we went back to bed.

The only thing that I have to say is that I sleep like a rock in the mission. I sleep very deeply. Where I am at, only a few of the highways got damaged. And none of the buildings. We didn´t have electricity for half of the day, but it returned at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. The only thing that happened here is that things fell of the walls or off the shelves, that's all. Today there was another problem with the electricity, but it was fixed.

I was a little worried about Scott, when I saw all of the damage in Santiago and heard that people had died. But I knew that he would be okay. Like Whitney said in her email to me, the Lord protects His missionaries.

There was a young couple, my mission leader and his wife that went to get sealed in the temple this week in Santiago. They called me yesterday to tell me that they were fine and that they had seen Scott at the Temple. They said he and I are just alike.

Well, the members of the church here better realized the need to be prepared for disasters like this. Some were prepared and others not. It just goes to show that we really do need food storage and supplies in times like these.

Hope that you all are having fun and doing well. Get prepared with food storage and such!