This was a beautiful city, a city that represented our region, and now it is completely destroyed. Right now, we're looking at the rubble that was once my house, our house.
The emergency siren was on. There was chaos everywhere. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has always prepared us for these kind of events. The Lord through His prophets has taught us to be self-sufficient both temporally and emotionally. The members reacted very well. There were no markets and no way of buying anything, and so we turned to the storage of the members. And we were surprised how many of them followed the counsel of the Lord. Together with my wife we moved everything to the backyard, and there we took out our stored water. They have the water, food, and medication for their needs; they even have some to share. And all the resources the Church has in an emergency is the bishops' storehouse of food water and supplies. The city of Constitution to the west had a very serious situation, so it became a priority and we took pickups loaded with food and water. When we got here it was worse than what we were expecting. People were running from side to side without knowing where to go.
For eight days in a row, the entire week, we were bringing food, blankets, bringing tents and cleaning.
A lot of mothers came to us, that are now members of our Church, to ask us for milk for their babies and diapers. We were able to share these things with many women.
I give thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ, because at that moment they were always by our side. Even though we are not members of their church, we've always recieved their support. Today the work changed. It's not the same. I'm thankful for having this knowledge, to know that thanks to the leaders' teachings, we can be prepared. The feeling I have when I saw my brethren going and helping others, both from our faith and those who are not, is to feel the pure love of Christ manifested through them.
30 men worked with me yesterday. We worked from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. We didn't rest. Why did they do that?
Love.
Pure love.
