February 8, 2016 - Just a Little Shaken

Dear family and friends

This week a 6.4 earthquake came over the city of Gaoxiong and Tainan. The epicenter of the quake was just over 20 miles from my apartment building. It happened at approximately 3:40 a.m. All missionaries are safe and accounted for. It is has been a little crazy this week because of all the things that have been happening. The earthquake caused a lot of buildings and things to go down. The biggest building that came down is a ten minute bike ride from our house. Ambulances have been sounding all week and it has really given Tainan an uneasy feeling about it. A picture of the building that came down is attached.

The best way I can describe the earthquake from my perspective is it felt like the consistency of the concrete building we live in turned to Jell-o and everything inside was moving. The higher you are in a building the worse the shaking and we live on the top floor of our 8 story building;) The earthquake lasted about 2 minutes. We left our apartment after the shaking stopped just to be safe. We didn't want to be in our apartment just in case it started up again because trying to leave from the 8th floor in a building that was trembling like that...you wouldn't make it down the first set of stairs. There wasn't much real damage to our apartment; just a bunch of the tiles and our personal things came down. We luckily didn't lose power but a lot of houses lost water and power. 

I feel so blessed that all our members and missionaries are safe. We did have a member however, with an extensive book collection that was badly affected by the situation so we have spent the past three days there trying to remove the bookshelves so she can get in and out of her house and get to her motorcycles. 

Nothing else we did compares with the earthquake but it has been a week full of blessings and adventures. We went with Hinckley, our friend, to do missionary work. Three working together is always better than two...right?

We also spent some time playing traditional Chinese drums and enjoyed a Chinese New Year dinner at a member's house and had a good time.

I love you all,

Sincerely, Elder Erwin