Alicia Parata, a Youth leader at our RECHARGE Youth group. and a key member of our night service, was in New Zealand when the earthquake hit Christchurch. Here is what she had to say:
“I was in Dunedin last week I kept thinking that I wouldreally wanted to share my experiences of seeing how the people of NZ rallied to support those in Christchurch with Christ Church.
I wanted to tell you what it was like.
My mum & I arrived in Dunedin on Monday afternoon in preparation for cousin’s wedding on Saturday (normally you can’t fly direct to Dunedin from Sydney, and have to fly to Christchurch and drive down- thank God literally that we didn’t have to do that as the earthquake struck the very next day).
On Tuesday we both headed out to do some shopping on the main street. After blazing through all the shops that the one shopping mall in town had, we met my Uncle Jeff at his work in the council chambers and had coffee and caught up on all the family news. The first thing he said to us was “Did you feel the earthquake?!” Because we had been walking around and moving a lot, we didn’t feel it, but a lot of people sitting down in office buildings felt it very strongly.
At that point we didn’t even know where the earthquake had come from- if it was centred in Dunedin or somewhere else. NZ gets a lot of earthquakes so no one really treated it as much of a big deal and I thought it was just a minor quake.
An hour later Mum & I were in a clothing store and stopped in our tracks to listen to the radio playing through the store’s speakers.
What stopped us right then and there, t-shirts in hand, was the words “there have been reports of deaths amongst the rubble”.
Amidst the frivolousness of $20 t-shirts and $15 shorts, I felt a deep sense of “none of this stuff matters”. Right there, in the shop, I felt silly for spending my entire day shopping for things that were really inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
Four hours drive away, in a city I had visited many times, people were dead, dying, seriously injured, scared and trapped.
Four hours away families were scared and fearful for their loved ones in Christchurch’s CBD.
Four hours away mothers ran barefoot for half an hour to check on their children at school.
Four hours away people in an office building had to resort to sliding down the outside of a building on a rope weighted only by the mass of another man.
Four hours away strangers banded together to physically peel off the roof of a car, only to find the driver hadn’t survived.
All of this (and so many more horrific stories) we watched on the 24/7 streaming news coverage that night, news coverage that ended up running for three days straight. In all of the pictures taken the city looks like a warzone. It literally looks like someone has dropped a bomb into the centre of the city, a city where my Mum was born, where now I can’t even recognise places I’ve been. Perhaps the saddest sight of all was the spire from the cathedral crashed and splintered on the ground. I’ve seen that cathedral before and it is magnificent. Right in the heart of the city, surrounded by shops and businesses and restaurants, it is a powerful reminder that this city is Christchurch, Christ’s Church.
In the following days, Christchurch became the dominant topic of conversation. In cafes, book stores, supermarkets and pharmacies, you could almost always hear someone talking to someone else about the earthquake. Being the next largest city, almost everyone in Dunedin knows someone who lives or has lived in Christchurch. I have been to Christchurch many times and know people that live there. And so many of those people have had their homes or workplaces wrecked by the force of the quake that was struck so suddenly.
What was amazing to see was how New Zealand responded. Almost immediately, medical personnel were dispatched to the city. Ordinary Dunedin citizens loaded up their cars and drove to help out. People poured into church services on Sunday, many admitting that they hadn’t stepped foot inside a church in years. As all the supermarkets posted signs declaring they were out of milk, or bread, or toilet paper, or flour (it changed every day) because of the situation in Christchurch, students organised for Dunedinites to make and drop off hundreds of packaged lunches, and shipped them to help feed rescue workers.
Being in New Zealand at the time of the earthquake was a little scary and disarming. But it was also amazing and very humbling. I didn’t feel the earthquake (although I felt one aftershock in the middle of the night a few days later), but what I felt most was the compassion and empathy people had for those affected in Christchurch. People forgot about all the materialistic things we get so caught up in with this life and focussed on what really matters- we are alive, we are safe and we are provided for.
People who weren’t Christians asked me how God could let this happen. It’s hard to know what to say to that, but what I told them was that the city was named CHRISTchurch. The sentiment behind that wasn’t lost on me. God had not abandoned this city. He hadn’t let something horrible happen to it, just to stand back and shake his head. What happened was a natural disaster, the result of tectonic plates colliding. We know that God ALWAYS works for the good, and that hadn’t changed because of the earthquake. And in fact, so much good came out of this horrible situation. People getting to know their neighbours, spending quality time with their kids and their family, banding together to help clear liquefaction from a stranger’s driveway, people rescuing others without even thinking of their own safety. This is not just something horrible that happened to the city. This is something where God has allowed many good things to come from it.
The fact that this happened in a city called Christchurch made me think that maybe this city is supposed to become a light on the hill- look how we’ve dealt with this awful event, look how it’s brought us closer together as a people, look how we’ve responded. Look how God has provided for us so well- with the city’s civil defence department being so well organised and the rescue efforts being so efficient, and the Earthquake fund and levy resulting in billions of dollars already being stored in case a situation just like this one occurred. It’s possible that a city couldn’t have been any better prepared to deal with the fallout of such a disaster, or so many officials in NZ are saying.
Okay, that was a lot to read… sorry about that! Once I got started I couldn’t stop, there was so much to tell.
Leash “
powerful experience. Don’t forget to keep praying for New Zealand
- Alex
