Let me tell you a story about an earthquake ….

Okay, so my first experience with an earthquake was quite an interesting one. It was a Wednesday evening and I was headed off to teach English class. This was actually my first time trying to find the office (where classes are held) on my own. I thought I knew the way, but I took a left instead of a right. This left me wandering around for quite some time. I had left in plenty of time to make it to class, but as I continued to wander, the time slipped away. I knew I had the right area; I was just slightly off the mark. As I was wandering around, and passing the same security guards multiple times, I began to hear some shouting from one of the houses I passed. A few kids came running out the door and I immediately felt bad for them. “What did those kids do to deserve that kind of shouting??” Of course, I didn’t have any grasp of the language at that point, so I had no clue what was being shouted. As I continued down the street, I passed by a construction site that had a makeshift fence around it. When I passed this fence, it started to open into me. My first thought was “how rude!” and kept on walking. As I turned the next corner, still glancing back and forth between my watch and my map, I noticed more commotion in the streets and looked up to see people standing outside their buildings crying. “What in the world is wrong with all these people?” I continued my quick pace trying to find the office and just glanced up to see if there was a fire in the building I was passing. I got further down the street, however, and discovered that everyone was outside their apartment buildings and most of them were upset and crying. It was about this time that a second wave of the earthquake hit and I stopped walking. I looked up and could see the street lights shaking, but mostly I could hear them shaking. Right about that time, I felt the ground moving under me almost as if it was a wave … a very small wave, but a wave nonetheless. At this point, I honestly thought “This is so cool!!” I continued to wander around lost, with people crying in the streets around me, until I finally called a friend from our office to come get me. It’s funny though what I saw around me during this earthquake.

I almost missed an earthquake happening around me, but I couldn’t miss the hopelessness in the eyes of the people who were affected around me. I was thinking this was an amazing show of God’s power and they were standing in the streets in complete despair. Granted, I had never been in an earthquake before and had no prior traumatic experiences to be frightened by, but I was still so struck by this hopelessness. This hopelessness seemed so prevalent in the faces of everyone I saw standing in those streets, and then that I saw in the days to come on the news as they reported on the earthquake. God used this earthquake to remind me of this hopelessness … not just in the face of an earthquake, but in light of eternity. This is why I am here … because people need hope and I have been blessed to be sent here to help share it with them.