Earthquake in Japan, June 14, 2008

Well, today we had our first taste of an earthquake! I was standing in the kitchen
and Dad was out on our veranda cleaning out his electric razor. It was around 8:00 a.m. and all of a sudden it felt like we were on a skate board or in a moving motor home. It just kept going from side to side. It knocked a bed side rail off the top of a window sill where it had been stored and the metal end hit our little china cupboard--just missing the glass in the door but gouging the wood around it. It also knocked over 2 fans that were on top of the wardrobe and knocked over a radiator-type heater. It also knocked over our radio in the bedroom--but we didn't discover any of this until we came back this afternoon from Eikaiwa (our English class). These are just a couple of pictures we got off the internet. If you want to see some live footage, you can go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4155026.stm
The earthquake measured 7.2 and the epicenter was about 50 miles north of us. It lasted about 30+ seconds, but it seemed a lot longer than that. We have missionaries in the area--Ishinomaki, but the office elders called and everyone is okay. There were three reported deaths but several people have been reported missing. We have a Japanese sister missionary in our ward, Naganuma Shimai, who remembered a very bad earthquake they had in Kobe when she was very little girl. 6400 people were killed in that one, so she was scared to death. She and Sister Larson left their apartment and went over to the church.

We promised the next blog would be on mission life and on the Japanese language, but I guess that we needed a little excitement first.
Love, Mom and Dad