A small fishing town named Arauco

We`re in a small down called Arauco about 1.5 hours south of Concepcion, which was one of the hardest hit cities. Auraco was lucky because it was protected from the tsunami in a cove and also by an island, Santa Maria, that acted as a break water. We were welcomed with amazing hospitality by the staff and Dominican sisters at a nursing home where we have been helping out. Half of their building is uninhabitable and will have to be demolished, and they are still without water.  We´ve been hauling a lot of water, using outhouses and taking spounge baths. Imagine giving 85 grandma and grandpas spounge baths by heating water on a campfire in the back yard. The other place where the work has increased by 3 fold is the laundry room and I´ve learned to wash by hand MUCH faster :).  

Yesterday we were able to go with the Catholic youth group to a small town south of here named Llico that wasn´t as lucky as Auraco.  The tsunami lifted up half the town and broke them like toothpicks.  Most the debree doesn´t even look like houses. There are some 400 families living in tents up in the hills.  They have all the basic immediate needs met by donations including water, food, clothes, tents and even toys for the kids and psychologists for everyone.  A young mother we were talking with said that there have been so many generous people come with donations, good humor, smiles and laughs.  They are so well organized, divided into seperate camps with someone in charge of each one, and a counsil of camp representatives to make community decisions.  They are now moving on to the next step, which is starting demolition and trying to begin to rebuild, which turns out to be very complicated.  The winters are really rainy here so it´s a pressing concern. 

We have seen the same Chilean strength of character here as we did in Santiago.  Another mother we talked with was so positive and upbeat, joking about everything, and talking mater of factly about their situation.  She told us about how her little boy, Manuel, has lots of questions she doesn´t know how to answer, and how he´ll play with his new toy trucks and reinact the scenes that he saw on the highway after the earthquake.  She said that she doesn´t want to go and even see where her house was, as she feels she can´t deal with that right now, she´s only looking to the future and meeting all her families´ needs. 


Manuel´s little cousin was there too.  Her name is Millaray.  She was such a beautiful little girl and made me think of our Millaray back at the Hogar in Santiago.  It made my heart break to imagine our precious little girl having to go through all this... loosing her house, all her belongings, her stability, her whole world being turned upside down again.  This little girl, this little family, could have so easily been any number of so many people we love so much.  Life is so fragile, and you don´t truly appreciate what that means, with all of it´s facets, until you live it up close. 

Give thanks each day for EVERYTHING. 

From the moment you open your eyes,

you turn on your faucet,

you walk out your front door,

you ask your neighbor how they are... really ask...

until you tuck your children into bed at night,

... Give Thanks...