We Survived! :D

Hermanas Sanford and Moraga--safe and sound and visiting members of the
Limarí branch in Ovalle, the day after the big 8.3 terremoto of 2015

Hey, family! Greetings from Chile!
I don't know if the news made it to the states about the earthquake Wednesday night, but President gave us permission to go and write home to let you know that everything's okay.:)

I'll write more details in my email on Monday, but in short, we were in a lesson on Wednesday with an investigator around 7:50 PM, when all the sudden the ground started shaking... Which is fairly normal, but then it continued to increase and increase and INCREASE in intensity, until all the pictures started falling off the walls and everything was tipping over... We ran to the front door and stood in the door frame until the earthquake finally stopped about 2 minutes later. It was a long one.

The aftershocks continued to come after the initial earthquake (which ended up being an 8.4 on the Richter scale) at an intensity of between 5 and 7, depending on which one we're talking about, for the next four hours, and even now, they come rolling through every half an hour or so. They say it could be that way for MONTHS. It was crazy.

We came home to find our house an absolute disaster; the front window was completely destroyed, and all our stuff was on the floor and covered in a thick layer of dust... The sink in the bathroom got detached from the wall... But everything's fine now! We've been in the process of clean-up, and a couple of hermanos from our branch came and helped us replace the window! It's been a memorable 18 de Septiembre.:) Happy 18 today, by the way!

But yeah, just wanted to let you know not to worry--everything's fine, we're all just fine, and Ovalle is just fine! It was quite the adventure: We Survived the Terremoto de 2015.:) I love you all! Have a wonderful rest of the week; more info to follow on Monday!:)