After lunch, a few minutes before the earthquake struck, I had been telling my local colleagues that I felt kind of an uncomfortable hot atmosphere surrounding me. One teacher said that she felt a tremendous unease in her heart. I then left to set up my classroom for teaching.

As soon as I arrived, I saw the students moving around crazily. I told them not to move. Then my body hit a table and I realized that it must be an earthquake. We couldn't stand still. We were moved back and forth by the tremors. The computer tumbled as did some of the students. I thought I would soon be in God's glory.

The teachers then told all the students to run quickly down the stairs to the track or basketball court. There were over a thousand students in the building. Fortunately, we had only four stairs to go down. When we reached the third floor, we saw that the whole wall along the stairs had already cracked. As soon as most of the students were out, bricks and cement fell from the building. I tried to call home or contact family members but the message failed to reach them.

It normally takes me 45 minutes to go home from school by car but this time it took me 2 hours. When I arrived where we live, the gate guard told me that nobody was allowed in the building as there was no water or electricity.

However after went to bed at about midnight there was suddenly a call by the guards outside to evacuate the building as they expected aftershocks.

I already had a cold coming on so I didn't relish the thought of spending the night on the streets. However, I prayed and decided that we need to show our cooperation. So we obeyed and got some bedding together and headed to the sports stadium where we spent most of the night sleeping on the running track along with many other people.

At about 4 o'clock, it started to rain more heavily. I sensed the Lord would keep us safe at home, so we decided to return home. We were relieved that the guards let us in without saying much.

We are glad that we can lean on our shepherd both for guidance and protection.