September 25, 2017
Basically this has been the strangest week of my life!
Tuesday we had just walked out of a lesson, and I stopped to ask how much a couple of bananas would cost, then the lady starting getting all weird and said "¿esta temblando? ¡ESTA TEMBLANDO! ¡ESTA TEMBLANDO!" (Is it shaking? It's shaking! IT'S SHAKING!!)
....and then she started praying with her hands in the air "Perdonanos Jesus!" (Please forgive us Jesus!)...so me and my comp walked out into the street.
Honestly before the lady said anything, me and my comp both just thought that a really big truck was passing by or something. That's what it sounded like and felt like at first. We just stood in the middle of the street shaking for a little while, then all of a sudden it hit super hard, EVERYTHING wasn't just waving side to side, but moving dramatically!
I don't really know how to describe it, its a force that I had never felt before... but despite the fact that the whole earth was moving right below our feet, I didn't feel any sense of fear at all. And after it stopped I was just worried about the people in areas where it must have hit harder. I think one of the worst parts is that the earthquake knocked out all forms of communication. There was no internet, no cell service, not even light for several hours, and in some areas lasted til the next day.
From what people have told us, there was a ton of damage in the center of Cuernavaca, a big bell tower fell, a 4 story building collapsed on top of a public transport bus full of people, and other buildings collapsed! We communicated with our leaders that we were OK and we kept working. Wednesday we left our house at like 6:45 am to go on divisions with our sister training leaders in an area called Alpuyeca. Basically all day with them we kept getting updates from the zone leaders telling us we needed to tell our families we were OK, and to go buy food and make an emergency backpack.
...and we needed to check our house to make sure it was safe and send a report to the mission presidents wife, and other safety and preparedness stuff, buuuut we couldn't really do that because we weren't in our area. For part of the day I was on splits with Hermana Shook, and we went to a pueblo called...I don't remember, but a tiny pueblo that got pretty beat up. There were lots of houses collapsed, the main Catholic church literally "deflated like bread dough" as a member that witnessed it described it to us. In fact almost all of the Catholic churches in this whole area had at least part of it fall. ;(
Wednesday night some other sisters had to come stay with us because their house had some nasty cracks in it. Thursday we woke up and got ready to go back to Cuernavaca because we had interviews with the mission president. But before we left, the other sisters got a call telling them to cancel their plans because they were going to be doing service all day. So we left their house pretty bummed that we had to go to interviews instead of doing service, but like 10 minutes down the road the sisters called us and said "Hey come back, we're all going to go do service!" Woohoo, so we headed back.
ALL of the missionaries in the Cuernavaca Zone and ALL the missionaries in this other zone where we were doing service (called Galeana) were there. Approx. 34 missionaries and president and his wife. All the Elders and men went to a place called Jojutla that pretty much got demolished
The bishop's house there is literally dust... They helped with the heavy lifting stuff, and all the sisters stayed back in the stake center making care packages of sorts, with the essentials, toilet paper, canned veggies and tuna, crackers, soap, soup, diapers. and sorting through and making packages of clothing as well.
We were there all day and made it back to our house about 9:00 that night, when we found a few cracks on the upper level of our house, but nothing too worrisome.
The Hermanas that were serving in Jojutla got pulled out and put in another area. As far as I know, all the missionaries are fine. Several members have made comments to us like "of course nothing happened to you two - you're serving in the work of the Lord." or "You're missionaries, you're basically immortal!" Haha so mom, you have nothing to worry about :)
We're back to our regular schedule, but it still feels just a little off. Everyone's honestly just super shaken up (no pun intended). 32 years ago on the very same day, September 19, there was a devastating earthquake in Mexico City that killed tons of people. They say that the earthquake of 1985 is to them what the terrorist attack of 9/11 is to us. So to have it happen AGAIN on the very same day, is a little freaky, and everyone I've talked to that experienced the quake in 1985 say that they felt this one lots stronger! Poor Morelos has never experienced anything like this.
But it's been interesting talking to people about how they felt and what they were thinking about when the world started shaking...And almost every single person says that they immediately thought about their kids or their wife or their mom. Even to people that don't have the gospel in their lives, family is what matters most. And I'm just glad that we have the gospel in our lives and that we know that our family is eternal.
Keep sending a few of your prayers down here, as well as over to Puerto Rico. I can't imagine how bad it must be if they're literally pulling all of the missionaries out. ;( That's got to be quite the change for Landen.
--How did you guys get so lucky to have 2 missionaries in crazy parts of the world at the same time?
Love,
Hermana Bailey
