Home
Dianes letter
- Details
- Category: Prayer Letters
- Published on Tuesday, 02 March 2010 14:31
- Written by Administrator
- Hits: 388
Dear friends,
Sorry to make this so impersonal to each one who has taken the time to write a personal message of concern, but the reason is that time is limited due to the fact that I am in a service center with wifi. We have been without electric power in our home now ever since the earthquake at 3:30 am Sat. (62 hours now), so that means no computer, internet or television. You all probably know more of what is going on in Chile than we do! We go out to the car periodically to listen to the radio.
Sent: Monday, March 01, 2010 4:34 PM
Subject: Update on Chile from the Stewards
Anyway, to answer questions generally: Our family is fine. Curtis, Christina, and I were awakened out of a sound sleep and ran down the hall to stand at the front door for the 2 1/2 minutes duration of the 8.8 earthquake. We have experienced many, many tremors during our 26 years here in Chile, it's kind of part of life, but this really topped it all! Sounded like a freight train passing by and all the glass smashing and breaking in the house behind us. Thankfully, though, in spite of a number of things fallen and turned over, all we really lost were a few plates. Pretty hard to sleep the rest of the night though between the aftershocks and the phone calls.
All the missionaries are confirmed to be well. One family we just finally got in touch with today. Communications have been very poor, many land lines down (not ours) and most cell service at first. The hardest hit areas still aren't able to communicate with the outside world yet, most are lacking power and water too. Our missionaries' homes have suffered in varying degrees, sometimes just a big mess to clean up. The Reas lost most all of their dishes. The Daryl Thompsons who live in the Temuco Bible Institute (a very old building) were afraid the whole thing was going to come down. Quite a bit of work will be required to put things to rights there, rubble everywhere. Some of our Santiago churches were damaged. Curtis and I cleaned up the mission office this morning. A window broken along with some mess. But as you can see the Lord has been very good to us as a mission.
We continue to be in the middle of a crisis/catastrophe situation with our country though. The 5th to the 9th regions (like states or provinces) have been declared disaster areas, including the metropolitan area where we live. School was supposed to start for the year this week and has been delayed. The worst hit areas are Maule (the region where we used to live in Linares) and BioBio, especially the coastal areas which we also affected by the tsunami. In some cases entire towns have disappeared off the map! Curtis just showed me a newspaper photo of Pellehue where we once went on an anniversary trip...all under water. Hospitals, bridges down, international airport closed...and the worst is the looting, a national disgrace! They have had to call in the army to control in the big cities of Concepcion and Talca. To date the death toll is at 723 and climbing. Things are in pretty bad shape, even the authorities could not get any information or contact with Concepcion until 8 hours or so after the quake struck. Obviously it is going to take Chile a while to recover from all this. And I'm sure we haven't heard everything yet.
Well, trying to close this off... we're trying to get back to normal as much as possible, although that is difficult to do without power and other technology that we're used to. We've had to cancel an annual mission meeting that was to be held in Temuco this week. There is much distress in Chile as a country. Usually earthquakes seem to hit a more limited area...this one was very widespread, long, and hard! So we appreciate all your prayers for us and our people. Pray for relief for those who are isolated and in need, for protection, for resources for rebuilding, for wisdom in ministering to those we encounter, for rescue workers and police dealing with many difficult situations.
I will try to write again whenever we have better access to cyber space.
Thanks so much for caring, Curtis and Diane Steward