A couple of days ago I was awake a little before 6:30 am and the house started to vibrate. It gradually built up until it was bouncing a mirror that leans against the wall behind Liz's desk. Liz woke up and wondered why the mirror was bouncing against the wall, but never thought of earthquake. It turned out to have been a 5.2 earthquake centered about a hundred miles south of Zagreb, so roughly 250 miles away from us. That level of earthquake is fun and entertaining, but having been through a major earthquake less than a year ago, we are quite sensitive to them and have little sense of humor about it. But life goes on.
Today, I got up early and went back to sleep during the morning. After my nap I got in the shower and while I was washing my feet the house started to vibrate again. It was stronger than the earlier one, and it built up to a much higher level. Enough that I had the dizzy feeling you get when the ground moves under your feet. I was waiting for it to get to where the shower would fall apart and the building fall down around me. It occurred to me that it would be quite embarrassing to be found in the rubble with nothing on. Very un-missionary like! Luckily, it didn't do that. It gave us a good shake, though. This one was centered in the same area of Croatia as the first one, but it was a 6.3 earthquake (110 times as strong as a 5.2 earthquake).
My first thought was that this was too much! We should just go back to Texas where the ground doesn't roar at us and knock us down with buildings on our heads. My second thought was that we are missionaries. Our job is to help the people of this area, giving aid and comfort. It is no time to throw in the towel and skulk away. So we'll stay.
We normally go shopping for groceries on Mondays, but we were busy yesterday and went shopping after the earthquake. To celebrate our good fortune in not being killed by earthquakes, I bought a special treat. Milka is a brand of swiss candy: their chocolate bars are even more popular here than Hershey is in the USA. They have a regular-size chocolate bar with bits of Oreo cookies in them, but they are not my favorite because the bits of cookie are hard and make letting the chocolate melt in your mouth not so enjoyable. But they have large, 300 g. bars that has a single layer of solid Oreo cookie and layers of filling on both sides, all covered by that luscious swiss chocolate. Those are fantastic! So I bought one. I already ate half of it, which is quite outrageous. Liz declined to celebrate with me, so I'll save the rest of it for tomorrow and (hopefully) the day after.
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