Handout art Mark Roberts
The people of Talca, Chile, were literally tossed from their beds in the early hours of last Saturday as the 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck just 65 miles away.
Among those residents was a 19-year-old Mormon missionary from Mesa, Mark Roberts, who darted into the streets with his roommate in their pajamas and immediately began searching for survivors.
Roberts, a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, provided an interview to the church's news office, which in turn distributed it to the media.
In the interview, he described the streets of his neighborhood as flowing, as if someone was shaking a pot of water, with streetlight posts swinging back and forth.
"It was something that I can't really describe," Roberts told the interviewer. "There was so much power."
According to church interview, Roberts and his companion began knocking on the fragile doors of the adobe homes to check on neighbors, offering their help and prayers. In many of the homes, the quake had thrashed the furniture around, injuring residents and making it difficult to escape.
Roberts and his companion found a home where some furniture had fallen on a girl's head, he told the interviewer.
She was the first of many that the young men carried into the streets to find medical attention.
When the people of Talca heard through the radios that Concepción, a city southwest of Talca, had been severely damaged as well, they knew this earthquake was more than a scare, but was actually very serious.
Roberts told the interviewer that he and a group of volunteers headed to the center of the city where there was extensive damage to the 100-year-old homes.
Roberts said the streets were destroyed, and people were crawling out from under the rubble. "There was so much to do, like who do you help?" Roberts told the interviewer.
His group stumbled upon the home of a woman whom they had contacted earlier as a potential convert. As her family was trying to dig her out from underneath, they told the missionaries to just find any firemen they could because she was already dead. "That was really hard," Roberts told the interviewer.
There are 10 mission groups stationed throughout Chile, each responsible for 150-200 missionaries, both national and international, Mesa LDS Mission President Len Greer said in a statement.
Within hours of the earthquake, each mission president was contacted to report on the status of his missionaries.
Roberts was able to send an e-mail to his family in Mesa the day after the earthquake.
It said, "I am fine. Don't worry. Pray for the people here in Chile. We have been very blessed and are working hard here helping with the damage."
In times of natural disaster or trauma, foreign and local church officials and their missionaries must adjust to the situation at hand.
"Typical missionary challenges suddenly paled in comparison to the devastation now facing the Chilean people," Greer said.
Roberts said, "that's the life of a missionary: service, service, service. We're representatives of Christ here in Chile and that's what he would want us to do . . . that's the first thing that we could think of to do. How could we not help?"
According to Greer, all missions worldwide have the task of first locating all of their missionaries and making sure they're safe.
Secondly, local LDS churches are expected to offer any humanitarian aid necessary through the local supplies. If more is needed, it is requested from the center of the LDS Church in Salt Lake City.
Roberts said that before the earthquake hit, the people he has met there had already become like a second family. Even now, after the earthquake, Roberts told the church interviewer they aren't having any trouble finding food or water because everyone is doing all they can to support one another.
Alejandro Sanchez, Roberts' local mission leader, fed the missionaries lunch twice a week in his home. Now, with his home destroyed by the quake, the missionaries are feeding him lunch every day.
Roberts has been stationed in Chile since November.
Source: AZCentral.com
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