Thursday, February 5, 2015

Shake it Off

In February 2011 I was on my mission in New Zealand. I was serving in the second largest city called Christchurch on the southern island. This city is a decent size, with tall buildings in its city center and many shops and homes surrounding it. One morning my companion and I were driving on one of the main roads and started to notice everything shaking around us. Everyone stopped, and office buildings with lots of glass windows started to shatter. The shaking kept going for a few minutes and roads started to flood and sirens started to sound. We later found out that it was a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that had just hit this city. Many buildings had crumbled to the ground, 185 people died, and thousands injured. Lots of screaming and panicking was going on around us right after it hit. We had no idea what to initially do.

We abandoned our car and went on foot to locate other missionaries and help others along the way. There were many people running around like crazy, chaos was definitely present. We tried to calm down a few people, including a man who needed to get to his wife and child. We were able to give him our bike so he could get there faster. We felt that official authority did not exist in that moment because there wasn't a whole lot that could be done except for people to help each other. I would say whoever wasn't panicking was able to step up and help others. As missionaries, we did our best to usher people to safety.

If everyone was in panic mode, no one would get helped and chaos would destroy everyone. Because we had faith that God would protect us, we were able to step up in an authoritative role and try to restore order to those around us. It was a humbling experience and one I will never forget.

2 comments:

  1. Wow. That's so great that you could be there to help those people... You became authority in more ways than one. You were there to guide others and quench (at least some of) the chaos, but you were also in authority over yourselves. Because of your testimonies and the peace you felt, you became authority to the chaos in yourself, itself! That's something that not even government, policemen, Mormon Helping Hands, or other authorities can do.

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  2. It is really neat that because of the faith that you had in God you were able to step up and be the needed authority. It's also cool to think that those who aren't members but still help are often motivated to do so because of the law of human nature or the fact that we all recognize what is good to do and what is not.

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