Earthquake Relief

Last week was quite the exciting week.  It started off like any normal week here at YWAM San Jose; Monday morning worship, work, classes.  But come Wednesday morning, as we were about to pray nonetheless, we felt the earth start shaking…and not in the good way.  About 80 miles from San Jose there was an earthquake that rated a 7.6 on the Richter scale.  To give you a reference point, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti was a 7.0.  Fortunately, the quake happened about 25 miles below the earth’s surface (the Haiti earthquake was about 8 miles down), so with it being that deep the damage from the quake was not nearly as bad as the damage we’ve seen in countries recently.  They issued an immediate tsunami warning, which I think is pretty standard for any earthquakes that occur near an ocean.  Fortunately, there was no tsunami follow-up.

Two days after the earthquake the DTS leaders offered to send the DTS a town near the epicenter that had a family that was forced to live on the street because their walls had collapsed.  On Friday they told us to pack up our stuff and that we’d be sleeping in tents in this town because it was safer to sleep outside than in a house in case there were more trembles.  It sounded like quite the adventure to me!  So on Saturday morning a few people from another YWAM base picked us up, we filled up a 15 passenger van and we headed out for the 7 hour journey (Did you do the math? The epicenter, where we were going was 80 miles away.  It took us 7 hours.  Now have you done the math?).  On the way we met up with another YWAM group that would join us for the weekend. 

 

Jake and his tires...

After we met up with YWAM Nicoya, we got a flat tire on our trailer.   Thankfully, God was watching out and we got the flat tire just as we came upon a tire shop.  So we bought a new tire, then drove a few extra feet to have another tire shop install it. 

We arrived at around 2:30 at a local church that had sustained damage in the earthquake.  It was the church that told us about the family that was living on the streets.  Our leaders were talking with their pastor to come up with the work plan and about 10 minutes after we arrived there was an aftershock that rated a 5.6 on the Richter scale.  It was short, but felt much more powerful at the epicenter than the earthquake felt 80 miles away.  About 20 minutes after the aftershock came the typical Costa Rican thunderstorm, where thunder is so loud it is deafening and the lightening is stacked right on top of it.  Then the downpour.  When it started to rain, they started coming up with alternatives to us sleeping outside because we would have gotten soaked!  We split up into 3 different groups and 3 local families housed us (the pastor and his wife housed about 10 people…you got that Josh and Rose??  J).

Jake and I and another couple stayed with a family that offered us beds (all our friends had to sleep on mats on the floor) and made us an amazing dinner of fish, rice, beans and salad (our friends had to eat rice and macaroni and cheese) even though we were supposed to have gone to join our comrades.   We felt like royalty!

A wall that fell down at the church.

We woke up in the morning to the sound of monkeys talking in the jungles around us.  It’s a great alarm clock!  We then headed out to the work sites.  One group of us helped at the church and another group went to the family’s house.  Jake and I helped at the church, separating wood, cleaning things up, and mixing concrete so we could build a temporary meeting place out back.  We worked alongside members of the church and the women of the church made snacks, juice, coffee and lunch for us.  These were some seriously hospitable women!!  We worked for the morning and because of the large number of us, in about 5 hours we were able to get almost everything completed.  That’s pretty crazy to me!

The way home was just as interesting as the drive there.  We got a phone call that there was a landslide and part of the road was closed (it was actually a bridge closure due to the earthquake and the subsequent rain, which washed out part of the bridge).  We were told there was no way around.  As we were driving, a Costa Rican woman flagged us down and told us that there was a road we could turn down to get around it.  We circumvented that bridge, but it was followed up by another bridge closure for which we had to wait about 90 minutes on the highway because all traffic was stopped.  We were all exhausted from having done hard labor that morning and sitting in a full 15 passenger van in the heat of the day is not fun.  We just wanted to get home.  We finally did after about 9 ½ hours!

Macaws we saw on the way home

Even though there were several speed bumps it was truly an amazing weekend.  We got to provide emergency relief for people and while we were there we got to be taken care of  by a group of people with great senses of humor and huge hearts.  We got to work alongside other YWAMers and other Christians, united for the sake of taking care of those in need.  It was so great being able to leave out of consideration any differences in cultures or doctrinal beliefs because what was more important was that people were in need and that superseded anything.  It was great to see the body of Christ doing what it is supposed to be doing…taking care of those in need, like getting a family off the streets and back into structure they can live in, even if it is a temporary solution. 

Some people would call me crazy to continue to have hope in the Body putting aside its differences to do take care of others, but when I experience it firsthand, I know it’s possible.  It’s possible when we lay down our pride.  It’s possible when we decide that loving people is more important than being right.  It’s possible when our love for others is at least the same as our love for ourselves.  It’s possible when we don’t need to fit people into the boxes that we are comfortable with.  It’s possible when we lay down our religion and pick up our cross.