Several months ago, Colombia was hit by the most powerful earthquake it has experienced in a century. I was getting ready for the gym at 7:30 in the morning when the windows started to rattle. When my husband and I rushed outside, the whole street was swaying. It was unlike anything I had ever felt before.
When it subsided, I thought, “If this wasn’t the epicenter and we felt it so strongly, I can’t imagine what damage there must have been in other parts of the country.” Sure enough, we turned on the TV and footage began to roll in of cracked cathedrals, women sprinting from falling buildings, and children on stretchers.
As a foreign mission worker serving alongside RUF Global in Rionegro, Colombia, I wondered what I could do to help.
Thankfully, there was little damage in our area. As I checked in with several students, each seemed unsettled and told me exactly where they were and what they were doing when the earthquake occurred.
These stories of their earthquake experiences opened up interesting conversations with students we would not have had otherwise, both in individual and group meetings. This semester, we are studying Ecclesiastes in our weekly Bible study. Over and over again, the Preacher talks about how fleeting life is.
The day after the earthquake, my colleague, Diana, had a long conversation with a student who is from Cali, one of the two most affected cities. I sat in the cafeteria with several newer students, talking about how an event like this makes you really think about how small we are, and about what we’re doing here on this earth.” Most of our students are not Christians, but the experience of living through an earthquake gave me an opportunity to encourage them to examine their lives and what they believe.
The week after the earthquake, we studied the first verses of Ecclesiastes, talking specifically about how creation itself shows us that everything on earth is a vapor.
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
Ecclesiastes 1:2-6
Students brought up the earthquake as another example, allowing us to reinforce the message of the study: our hope is not on this earth; it is in Christ.
A few days after the earthquake, I had the opportunity to travel with my RUF Campus Director, John McCall, and several others from our church to Pereira, one of the hardest-hit cities. John has a background in outdoor rescue and wanted to see if he could use his skills and equipment to search for people still trapped under the ruins. John wanted to go because so often natural disasters happen in hard-to-reach parts of the world, but this one was just a few hours away by car. He hoped it would serve as an example to our students: “Serving others is something we want to model and pass on to students as we are trying to grow this ministry,” he told me.
We brought lots of donations from the members of our MTW church plant in Rionegro, El Redentor. We partnered with groups already serving people who had lost their homes and were staying in parks; their biggest needs at the time were food and mattresses. Will Schaufelberger, the Campus Director at RUF-G in Bogota, also helped his students connect with churches and charities that were accepting resources and donations to help recovery efforts in El Chocó, the epicenter of the earthquake and the poorest region of Colombia.
Our church was also able to support a sister church in Cali through MTW’s compassion fund. Half of the donations are for the church families themselves, and the other half is for the families to use to help their neighbors. Nathan Bonham, the pastor of our church and MTW’s International Director for the Americas, told me, “The people in Cali won’t know this is MTW. What I want them to see is they’re receiving help through the local church.” We hope that as our sister church reaches their neighbors—being salt and light—the people of Cali will be drawn to the church.
Through all of these efforts, we seek to serve faithfully where we are placed, inspire college students toward fellowship and service, and shepherd them through challenging, frightening times with the hope of the Gospel.
Hannah Herrera lives in Colombia with her husband, David, serving in campus ministry. Before joining the 18:26 Network, an affiliate of MTW, she served as an Intern with RUF International and RUF Global. Read more from Hannah about her experience as an Intern here.