Monday March 1, 2010

Hola amigos,

So things have been interesting here the last few days. So we were sleeping peacefully in our apartment at about 3:30 in the morning Saturday when I woke up to my bed bouncing around like a toy. I shouted at Elder Coats to wake him up and he about freaked out. He said, Elder.. ¡¿Qué está pasando?! Basically, what the heck is going on?! It took me a little bit to realize it, but then I said.. terremoto! Earthquake! We couldn´t turn on the lights because the electricity was out and out little apartment is pitch dark at night. So I hopped up to find my flashlight. I could barely stand and things on shelves we´re starting to fall in the room. I grabbed my flashlight and we decided to run to the door frame and wait there. I can´t really explain what it was like but its nothing like you can imagine. The ground was rolling under our feet and the whole apartment was shaking and groaning and it was really loud, it seemed like it would fall down at any second. It went on for about another minute before finally fading away. Our little apartment was chaotic but everything was fine. We had so much adreneline we couldn´t go to sleep for a while. There were little aftershocks the whole day and yesterday. Those would just move your bed a little or make you feel dizzy. But it was quite the adventure. We didn´t have electricity in our apartment the whole day Saturday until the nightime. We werent allowed to leave the house the whole day Saturday. We had little cell service also. Yesterday when we left the house we saw what had happened. Apparently there were fires all around the city because the air was really bad. A couple houses in our neighborhood had collapsed but most are ok. There are a lot of fallen brick walls and stuff. Apparently our little neighborhood of Recoleta was a lot better off than others. The airport was left half destroyed I heard. And there are 700 people dead in Chile with a lot more still missing. The quake was about 200 miles south of Santiago, a lot closer to the city of Concepción. A lot of people there are suffering. Many members here have family in Concepción and so everyone is pretty worried around here but everything is getting better. Things are still a little bit crazy here. Theres not much food in the stores, the electicity is on and off but we´re fine. The work is a little bit slow but I think this will soften a lot of people´s hearts. We didn´t have our baptisms yesterday because the area presidency said that we couldn´t have meetings after sacrament. So atleast Alvaro is excited for his baptism next week. We didn´t have transfers today either. I don´t know when we´re going to have them but the new missionaries can´t come because the airport is closed right now. Everyone here in our mission is good. We´re excited to go do a lot of service and help people clean up this mess. Tell everyone thanks for the prayers and I love you all. I know grandma is doing well also, I´m glad that everything went smoothly and she´s finally resting. Gracias por todo! Chao

Elder Webb