What an exciting day. We arrived in Honolulu around midnight, got to the room and I am sure it was at least 2 AM before we got settled in bed … no problem because we had decided to sleep in late to help from having jetlag. Fat chance. Instead, the alarm went off at 6 AM … but I didn’t set an alarm clock, and it would NOT shut off. What is this all about. Then, I get a message from my daughter Amber saying, are ya’ll getting the Tsunami warnings yet? What Tsunami warnings. I turn on TV and the internet and find out that Chile has just suffered an 8,8 earthquake and that Tsunami warnings are out all over the Pacific Rim … including Honolulu. Then we start getting announcements that the Tsunami WILL hit Oahu around 11:37 AM and that we are to stay put above the 3rd floor of our complex. (We are on the 21st floor.)

All the roads were soon deserted as people fled to higher ground. Our complex sits overlooking a marina and many of the boats left to head at least two miles out. (Apparently they were safe out that far.) By 11:00 AM, even safety personnel were evacuated. … and warnings were sounding off on the hour. (Oh yeah, the siren is directly below our hotel in plain view … boy was it loud.)

Even Pearl Harbor evacuated 6 navy ships.

We prayed, communicated briefly via cell phone, texting, and face book. We didn’t do too much because the alert systems were telling everyone to be brief so that communications channels/bandwidth would be open for safety reasons.

Because we had just gotten in, we had nothing … except a bottle of water, and bag of candy, and a bag of popcorn we had brought with us.

So this is what we looked like: Cheri and I are sitting out on the deck with our water, candy, popcorn, 2 cameras, video camera, binoculars, and ipod/radio. The roads are silent. We have drawn water in every available container in the apartment including the tub, and both sinks. We did not know if we would have electricity or running water so we wanted to be prepared.

We contacted close family and close church family and let them know we were OK and that God was with us.

Friends were constantly checking in via texts.

We never did receive the big stuff that was headed our way. We did see a really strange phenomenon where the water would go out (like low tide) and then surge back in but there was never any danger shown to us.

I did know if God diverted it according to our requests or what.

I do know that God was with us and Cheri and I were prepared to help anyone we could however we cold when this thing hit.

Somehow, that never had to happen.

So we did what Jesus would do in a good storm … we slept.

Only to wake up to 4 (count the … FOUR) more warnings followed by announcements to the effect of “This is a false alarm … you do not have to leave the area.” Yeah, thanks a lot for those.

Anyway, we have made another memory. I’m sorry my mom had to worry about us through all of this … but I am told that’s what moms do.

God is good … all the time … and all the time … God is good.