I seem to be having trouble publishing this post, let’s see if I can get it to work today. Here is the update I promised. As you know, I alternate Sundays between 2 different churches. Sunday I went to Bantura Baptist Church, about a 15 min drive up the hill from where I live. I normally teach children’s church during the service, then ladies’ Bible study after that. Church starts about 10am. I got there about quarter to 10 and parked my truck at the side of the road like always. I had just retrieved my bag from the back seat when I heard a rumbling. Then the strongest earthquake I’ve ever felt hit. It just was not possible to keep standing, so I sat in the road. It was absolutely awesome to feel that power rippling through the ground.
After about a minute the rumbling stopped, and all of us who had been sitting in the road got up and went on our way. When I got up to the church everyone was standing around and talking about what we had just experienced. This is the Sunday school building. It was not in good shape to start with, and the quake caused the grass roof to slide off. As you can tell, nothing collapsed. Thankfully we had nice weather and just followed our normal routine. During ladies’ Bible study we compared notes and laughed with each other at the various ways each of us responded.
On the way home I wondered how my house, and my whole neighborhood had fared. Thanks to the Lord there was no major damage anywhere. My house is built on the side of a hill, and although the back is near the ground, the front is elevated on posts. Obviously, this amplifies the movement. All that shaking make my house get motion sickness, so my cabinets threw up all over my kitchen. It took about an hour to clean up. Some of my neighbors spent a good part of the day cleaning, so I’m thankful for my small kitchen.
I rarely remember to take pictures, but this is a brief sample of what I shot while I was sitting in the road. I have spoken to several people from the surrounding areas at the clinic, and no one has reported injuries. On the news it was reported that 3 men were killed in a landslide or cave-in at a gold mine some distance south of here. A few years ago dozens of people were killed from landslides in a earthquake because the ground was so saturated. This earthquake occurred during our dry season, so only a few clods of dry earth rolled down here and there. God has been so good to us! The superstitious rumors abound, so please pray that the Lord’s people will speak the truth in love.
