Service and gratitude fueled recovery in quake-weary Peru
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Editors note: The Church News visited Peru last month to report on Church-sponsored humanitarian projects and other stories. The first such report — an account of the Church's assistance in building a primary school in the quake-ravaged town of Chincha — appeared in the Dec. 4 issue of the Church News. A report on the resiliency and efforts of the members in the quake's aftermath is found below. Subsequent reports will be published in the Church News in the coming weeks.
PISCO, PERU
Church members in Pisco, Peru, and neighboring cities will tell you they've lived two distinct lives: before and then after Aug. 15, 2007. On that date a massive 8.0-magnitude quake devastated several cities in southern Peru, claiming hundreds of lives and thousands of homes.
The quake remains a defining event for members here. They look back on the catastrophe with equal parts grief and gratitude. Grief for those who were lost. And gratitude for the many who enlisted faith, service, hard work, priesthood principles and Relief Society resourcefulness so others might endure and emerge, both physically and spiritually, from a monumental disaster.
Eduardo Torres felt an ache of foreboding on the evening the quake hit. The day had been cold and foggy and he'd had a bad day at work. A gardener at a local Church meetinghouse, Brother Torres said two men had arrived at the building that day looking for trouble and wanting to get inside. He and another man had to restrain the men from entering.
He was tired and perhaps feeling a bit melancholy when he arrived at his home in nearby Chincha to look after his four children. His wife, Sonia, was away studying at the night school she attended.
He was at a table reading his scriptures when his life literally collapsed. The ground under his feet began to shake, shift and roll. He called out to his children, ordering them out of their small adobe house.
"But we didn't have enough time to leave," he said. "The only thing I remember is being on the floor. I fell down. I couldn't see anything. It was dark. Everything had fallen down."
Then he remembered his children. He began the nightmarish task of pulling his children from the rubble. Brother Torres's brother lived next door and soon joined in the rescue effort. They found three children. All were injured and bloodied, but alive. The fourth child, 2-year-old Jessica, was missing.
Chaos ensued. They frantically called for Jessica and continued to search through the collapsed home. "We were looking under the walls and found our little child," said Brother Torres. "We took Jessica to the hospital, but she was dead."
Sister Torres had rushed home from school when the quake hit. There her husband told her the awful news.
Jeanete Gonzalez, another member in the area, remembers fearing the floor would open beneath her during the quake's most intense moments. She felt the earth itself could not endure such seismic violence. Sister Gonzalez and her family fled to the street. The blackness about them only added to their panic.
"It was so dark and all I could think about was being with my family," she said.
Pisco is a coastal city built against the Pacific Ocean in southwest Peru. The threat of a tsunami following a quake of such magnitude was both real and terrifying. "We all jumped on a truck and moved to higher ground."
The next day's dawn offered Sister Gonzalez a maiden glimpse of the disaster's size and scope. Pisco had essentially been destroyed. A large Catholic church built near the city's central plaza had collapsed during a funeral mass, killing some 300 parishioners. Sections of the famed Pan-American Highway that passes by the city were buckled and split apart.
In those moments Sister Gonzalez began feeling the weight of her Church calling. As Relief Society president of the Pisco Peru Stake, she understood her spiritual and physical capacity would be tested at levels she never expected.
Little Jessica Torres' death killed her mother in all but the most literal sense.
"I was dead too," said Sonia Torres, a Lima native who joined the Church after falling in love with the quiet, devout man who would be her husband.
"I died with Jessica. I was depressed. She was my world. She was my everything."
In the weeks and months following the quake, she would pass the days in the cemetery where Jessica was buried. The family did what they could to help. Her parents tried to offer comfort. Her children brought her candy. Her husband gently counseled her to find peace in her faith. But anger and grief remained.
"I would tell my husband, 'I want Jessica to be here. I want to feel my daughter's weight on me. I want to hear her say, 'Mother, I'm here.'"
Time would offer the beginnings of healing. Besides the unwavering love of her family, the knowledge of two sure things eventually pulled Sister Torres' from her abyss.
First, she knew she had an eternal family.
"The fact that we are sealed in the temple has helped very much," she said. "We know that Jessica is away, but just temporarily. We are sure we are going to see her again."
And second, Sister Torres knew she was loved and needed by her sisters in the Relief Society.
"My mother didn't want to go to Church after the earthquake," said 15-year-old Paula Torres. "But one day a group of sisters came and she felt better. She started going to Church again. We started going to Church again as a family."
Losing a daughter has etched on Sister Torres an intimate understanding of Christ-like empathy. She has learned to help other people. She is grateful for the many members who love and support her. She can't always find the words to thank them, so she prays for them.
Three years have passed since the quake and Jessica still visits her dreams."My daughter is running on green grass and I feel better."
In the hours following the quake, local leaders such as Sister Gonzalez and her stake president at the time, Hugo Zavala, would commence the long-term task of caring for hundreds of shaken members left without a roof over their heads or food in their bellies.
"I felt the hand of the Lord on my shoulders, telling me, 'I am with you,'" said President Zavala. "In spite of the first night that we had without sleep, I thought about a solution. I knew that I needed to get together with the priesthood and try to find the best ideas to help the members."
From the beginning, the local leaders in Pisco and other quake-impacted areas were strengthened by the temporal and spiritual support of the South America West Area Presidency. Food, water, tents, warm clothing and other emergency provisions began arriving almost immediately.
The Church's Humanitarian Response office also moved into action, dispatching a supply-laden cargo plane to Pisco to assist the members and their neighbors.
But President Zavala also understood that the local Relief Society would be essential.
"The help of the Relief Society was invaluable because of the difficulty of this situation," he said. "They were willing to help and sacrifice."
The "La Villa" chapel outside of Pisco suffered little damage in the quake. So the building became a refugee center — a tent city for some 600 homeless people. The local Relief Society was assigned to take care of all food and meals.
"These good sisters got up at 3:30 in the morning in order to start preparing the food — boiling water and peeling the potatoes. I could see in their faces such satisfaction," said President Zavala.
Keeping the building sanitary was an imperative. Public health can be jeopardized in the aftermath of a disaster, so Relief Society sisters scrubbed and scoured the building and the grounds each day to prevent cholera and other potentially deadly outbreaks of disease.
The sisters also provided childcare at the encampment and lent emotional support, a listening ear and perhaps a prayer for fellow women who had lost loved ones or were struggling to cope with the horrors of the catastrophe.
"We could feel the urge to serve because of the teachings we had received," said Ana Zavala, a counselor in the stake Relief Society Presidency and wife to President Zavala. "All of us could feel that we had the help of the Lord."
The efforts of the local Relief Society did not end when the final tent was folded at the meetinghouse/refugee center.
The sisters' organizational skills and capacity had caught the attention of the local government and women's support organizations. Soon the Relief Society sisters were being enlisted to travel to rural areas of the region and teach local women about nutrition, inexpensive food preparation, provident living, family values and personal hygiene.
"The Relief Society teaches us that 'Charity never faileth,'" said Sister Gonzalez. "We have to remember to develop love and always be ready to help."
The principles of the gospel, added President Zavala, are thankfully implemented in difficult times and calamity. "The teachings we have are so important because they help us keep our faith, to live right and to help other people."
Eduardo and Sonia Torres say they have been the recipients of two precious gifts since the earthquake shattered their lives and home three years ago.
The family spent more than a year residing in a temporary shelter, hanging mats for makeshift walls. Today, thanks to a large-scale, Church-sponsored home rebuilding project in the region, the Torreses are living in a modest but sturdy house built to withstand future temblors.
Hundreds of other member families are living in similar new homes.
Sitting inside the walls of his new house, Brother Torres said the Lord and His servants continue to sustain his family. "When the earthquake happened we lost everything — except the feeling that the Lord was with us," he said.
Sister Torres greets visitors to the home with a little one clutching playfully at her hand. Last year the Torreses welcomed a baby girl to the family. They named her Consuelo — the Spanish word for comfort.
"We gave her that name," she explained, "because of how the Lord has always comforted us."
