Ever since hearing about the dreadful tsunami that wreaked such havoc and devastation on the Indian Ocean coast, we have been concerned about two missionary families we know in that region. One is a family from our church, and I recently had an email they sent forwarded to me by our pastor. I’m copy/pasting it below to share how God protected them. It’s a crazy story – they were on vacation in Phuket, the resort that has been at the center of coverage as having gotten slammed particularly hard. Well, I’ll let them tell the story:
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(The email was in response to the question, “Are you alright?”
Yes, with all the usual qualifiers like barely and by the grace of God. We are vacationing in Phuket and were in our hotel pool when the waves began tohit. The day before we’d been at the beach, with guys scrambling all over some rocks at one end of the beach, out of sight and well out of reach. Next morning they were raring to get back, but for some reason, we headed for the pool instead. Had we not, our story would have been very different. Instead we rushed up a steep, wooded hillside with a thousand or so other tourists and locals, where we waited for four hours till the danger passed. I officially took us off the missing persons list with the consular officials at the Phuket Town Hall yesterday. Being there was heartbreaking. Generally we are a little cynical about the amount of media attention Phuket is getting, only because lots of Western tourists were lost here. However, looking at all the pictures of missing loved ones, most of them children, and realizing how a few seemingly insignificant, seemingly very human decisions kept us from pinning pictures of our crew… It was tough. All the pictures from the morgue were posted, too, and far more horrible than any fictional re-creation of drowning deaths you’ve seen on TV. Imagine scanning them trying to determine if that unrecognizable corpse was your
lively little one.
Do remember to pray for this family and for others serving in the region, as there is a long road ahead dealing with disease, rebuilding, all kinds of stuff.