Well as you have all probably heard there was a huge earthquake here on Sunday morning at around 1:30. As far as I can tell there was a 6.4 Magnitude earth quake followed immediately by a 7.1 so that it seemed like one big earthquake that got stronger as it went on. As for my story.
Well I was asleep as every good missionary should be at 1:30 in the morning, all of a sudden my bed started shaking pretty hard. For maybe a half second I was confused but I quickly realized it was an earth quake.I decided there was nothing I could do because we live on the fourth floor and it was shaking hard enough I probably would have fallen if I had tried to get out of bed. At this point my companion starts yelling at me in Tongan he is going to beat me up "Oku ou si'aia tuke ho'o mata" (I am going to punch your face )because he isn't all the way awake yet. Then he opens up his eyes and sees me both arms out holding onto the bed and starts freaking out thinking hes in a horror movie. He throws the blanket off of himself and looks around the room and seeing no demons and also realizing that the whole room is shaking not just the beds he finally realizes it is an earthquake. This is when the 7.1 hits because out of no where it really starts shaking bad and I started to get pretty scared I could feel the frequency of the waves rolling through my body and matching my heart beat every other beat. Thats the part that stuck out to me the most was the waves rolling through everything. It was really a crazy experience and we both buckled down on our beds at just rode it out until it was over. We looked out the window and the stop like was shaking like crazy it looked like it was flexing so much it would it a car if it drove under and it didn't stop for a few minutes. And tons of car alarms were going off for a long time but they were off when I woke up in the morning. And when we woke up and turned on the lights and like everything was on the floor and it took a while to clean up and that is all any one has talked about since it happened.
But even more exciting than the earth quake was what happened on last Monday night at 8:50. As we went to pick up our laundry at the Turnagain Elders apartment and go in for the night I wanted to just grab it and leave before the Turnagain Elders got there. Fate would have it that as we were leaving they walked in so naturally my companion ignored me saying we should leave and sat down to talk to them. Tired of being ignored and realizing this was one of the many battles not worth fighting because really you can only fight so many and win I sat down and waited for a good opportunity to leave. Anyway some how he got his hands on some bear spray and I told all these stories saying how terrible bear spray is and my last comment was "Id rather be mauled by a bear than sprayed by that stuff" at which point he slides the safety off and everyone starts yelling no dont do it and ssspppiiishsh he sprays it. None of us waited we ran outside immediately holding our breath. Within 2 minutes the whole apartment complex cleared out kids and parents running out crying and retching, it was terrible. And I think he learned a valuable lesson. I mean all of us did, about keeping the commandments and not questioning but having faith that it is for the better until you understand why. At least that was what I was thinking about and felt to learn from it.
There is so much more i would like to say about this week, the work has been amazing and the ward is starting to really love us, they give us so much stuff we dont have room for it in our apartment. And we are finding a lot more people to teach, but I am out of time so until next time Ofa Atu.
