Sunday

I didn't get to make a post yesterday, we left early and got in late exhausted.  We drove down the the town of Arauco to visit the churches there.  Both churches have damage and one may have to have a whole wall replaced.  We then drove to Lota and returned to visit 3 more churches in Concepcion.  We left food and supplies in all 5 places.  We are constantly touched by the gratefulness of the people we are able to help.  I'll enclose some pictures to help give you an idea of what we saw.

Driving can be quite a challenge, we had to carefully navigate our way through this broken area.

This section of road had fallen in near Lota.  Note the car at the bottom.

Many people are staying where they can.  We were at one place where 40 people were sharing one house, in this photo 10 families are staying at the church.  They made a small oven (on left) and are baking bread.

In Arauco most of the population is living in the hills.  Fear of more tsunamis has made them prefer to live in what shelters they can find or make than live in the insecurity of their homes.  We went to one camp where over 2000 people were living.

At each church we try to leave what food and supplies we have.  We will need to get much more and are hoping enough funds come in to enable us to meed this tremendous need.

Water continues to be a problem.  People line up to get what water they can, be it a fire hydrant that still has a little, an old well, or whatever.  We handed out what filters we had and hope to get some more in as soon as we are able

One thing has been constant, people have been very grateful for the help they've received!  

Many of the lines for gas have been over a mile long.  Yesterday we were trying to get back to where we keep supplies and encountered the worst traffic jam I've ever seen.  Trying to navigate around and through that was near nightmarish.  People were angry, frustrated, and even fighting.  We made it past one section and were cutting around back when I spotted a gas station with one car at the pump.  I thought it was worth a try and pulled up.  I asked the attendant if they had gas and he told me yes and we could get as much as we wanted!  We filled both the car and truck in just minutes!  Not one block from there was another station with a line at least a half mile long and hundreds and hundreds of motorists in a huge traffic jam.