March 1, 2010
Well, its kind of been just another boring week in Chile. But for anyone who has watched TV at all since Saturday knows that’s a dirty lie. First of all, here are the facts (that I know of)
- At 3:30 AM on Saturday, an 8.8 earthquake hit southern Chile near Concepcion.
- By the time it got to our pension, the earthquake registered at around an 8.0
- Shortly thereafter, a huge wave crashed into part of Chile and smashed up quite a few cities along the coast
- As far as I know, there have only been 300 confirmed dead (I obviously was not one of them)
- Lots of Concepcion is in ruins. A lot of Downtown Santiago is a mess as well.
- This was the 2nd worst earthquake in the past 20 years and the 5th worst ever.
- I am very highly reactive when I am woken up by an earthquake
- the rest of the elders in my pension are not
The video I attached hopefully should work. It was the reenactment of what I did that night. At that point in time we did not know the severity of the earthquake until later on that day. But to put it in words, I woke up to what I thought was my comp snoring really loudly. Then I realized that I had woken up because all the windows were shaking like crazy. I turned on the light and looked around. Everything was chaos. I ran into the hallway. It was shaking like nuts. I will never be able to describe exactly how it was, because it was something I will never be able to fully describe and something I will never forget. Being the good boy scout i was, I ripped off my mattress and hid underneath it, thinking that it would soften the blow of the ceiling falling on top of me. I had a lot of thoughts running through my head. Some of which I’m not gonna say here. But needless to say, I was scared. Scared that I would never see my family again, scared I would never be able to get married and have a family, scared I would never be able to attain my lifelong dream of owning a siberian huskie. Thanks to my quick thinking and surprisingly sturdy chilean architecture, we all survived with nothing but crazy adrenaline rushes and a sweet story to tell. The neighborhood we work in was not affected that much, but the people were. A lot of them had family in the south and were very shaken up. But it was at this time that I saw the love of God more than I had ever seen it before.
Shortly after the earthquake, our next door neighbor started yelling "Elders! Elders!". We came outside, and she asked if we were all okay. I felt a little sheepish that us as representatives of the Lord hadn’t thought of that first. Then later that night, we discovered that one of our investigator families was so nervous about us that they drove by our pension and then the church, calling out our names. "Paul! Blake!" (We made the mistake of telling them our first names and we havent been able to get them to stop) I almost couldnt believe it. I saw in that moment that these people really did care for us.
I am okay, no one we know got hurt, and we are recovering very quickly. The only downsides right now are that the water is a little questionable, there are lots of aftershocks, a lot of the lights in the streets and in people´s houses aren’t working, and there are robbers everywhere taking stuff. But I think all of that will go away very soon. I am very proud and a little surprised at how well Chile handled this catastrophe. I will never say a bad thing about chilean architecture ever again.
Thanks for your concern and your prayers. We will continue to pray for the families that have been affected. Love you all and hopefully I can finish my mission without too much more problems!
Con Amor,
Elder Westover
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