Yesterday morning, when I was traveling around to and from chapel services at nursing homes here in Bemidji, I had my radio tuned to a local Christian station that kept talking about the 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12.
I felt bad for the people of Haiti, but my emotions stopped there.
I kept getting frustrated because they kept talking about it when I wanted to hear some music.
Looking back, I should have known better.
And I feel like shit that I didn't care.
I then received an email from the president of my seminary informing the seminary community that the four Luther Sem students who were/are in Haiti are safe and trying to get back home.
One name on the list sounded familiar. Completely misspelled from how she spells it, but I just so happened to guess that the Catherine Emory was actually my friend Katie Emery.
And when I checked her Facebook profile and saw that her status was 'in Haiti til the 19th', my hunch was confirmed.
So then this whole earthquake ordeal took on a whole new level now that I knew one person directly affected by the quake. And someone I count as a good friend.
Then I was continuing to peruse Facebook statuses when I noticed one posted by another friend, Sarah Thomson, about how she was alive and in Haiti.
And it became even more painful.
Then tonight I was perusing the ever-prominent Facebook yet again.
And I read about a death of a Wartburg Seminary student, whose death was actually the first American named. One whose name was familiar to me because I went to college with his cousin, who also happened to be in Haiti. So my prayer list has now expanded to include my old colleague, Jon Larson, and his cousin who died in the earthquake, Ben Larson.
And through a roundabout method, I discovered that another acquaintance, Laura D'Angelo, was also there in the same group with Sarah and Katie.
No comments:
Post a Comment