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Evening, Jan. 14, Frisco, Colo.
The Rev. Suzanne Field Rabb rests her hands on the family Bible.
A
UMNS photo by John C. Goodwin.
View in Photo Gallery
At a late dinner, after two days without word, Nancy Gulley tries to
reassure two of her sons and their wives.
She wants them to know, after 49 years of friendship that began when
they were 15—a lifetime that had taken them to mission fields
throughout the world—she and her husband, Jim, are at peace with their
lives.
“We’ve had a great life. We’ve done the things we were called to
do,” she tells her family. “It’ll be OK.”
Evening, Jan. 14, Port-au-Prince
In their cramped space underneath the Hotel Montana, the trapped aid
workers also are reconciling themselves to their fate.
“Please, if I don’t make it out of here, make sure my wife, my
children, my grandchildren know I love them dearly,” Dixon keeps
saying.
Rabb, his legs pinned together by Dixon’s side, also asks the
others, “If we don’t make it, I want you to tell my family, tell
Suzanne, that I love her.”
As his wife is preparing their family, Gulley is preparing himself
with similar thoughts of acceptance, and gratitude for a life well
lived.
More than 50 hours into their ordeal, a feeling of calm pervades the
men and women lying together. “We were at peace in a sense together,”
Gulley recalls thinking. “Whether we were rescued or not, our future is
secure in God. We believed that.”
Evening, Jan. 14, Port-au-Prince, elsewhere in the
rubble
As she explores the opening into the night, Chand yells out, “Help,
help!”
She has experienced disappointment before. One last time, she yells,
“Help!” This time she hears a voice respond identifying himself as a
French firefighter.
Neither knows where the other is. Chand puts her legs through the
opening. The firefighter says, “I see your legs. Now, I know where you
are. … Sarla, we will get you out, all of you.”
The Rev. Sam Dixon and his wife, Cindy, were deeply in love, a friend
said. A UMNS file photo by the Rev. William Simpson.
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Shortly afterward, loud, clear voices pierce the darkness where her
colleagues are imprisoned: “We are French firefighters, and we are here
to rescue you.”
The words of “Amazing Grace” fill the air. Her trapped colleagues
sing the Doxology— “Praise God from whom all blessings flow”—as the
rescue workers approach.
The rescuers still need three hours to expand an opening to allow
Chand to get out. Creating room for the others takes more than another
hour. Gulley and Santos are pulled out by their feet through an opening
so small their chests brush against the concrete. Varghese stays with
Rabb and Dixon a little longer before she, too, is taken out of the
enclosure.
Evening, Jan. 14, Frisco, Colo.
Within 15 minutes of being rescued at around 10:30 RMT Jan. 14,
Gulley receives a satellite phone. He calls his home in Colorado, and
his middle son, Aaron, who lives in Santa Fe, picks up.
“Hello.”
“Aaron, what are you doing in Frisco?”
“Dad, Dad, we thought you were dead!”
Then all Jim Gulley hears is a lot of shouting and yelling.
Late evening, Jan. 14, Port-au-Prince
Dixon and Rabb take longer to free. The concrete pillar they are
trapped under is also holding up part of the ceiling.
But word is reaching their families of the rescue.
Dixon’s daughter, Christy, thinking her father may have suffered
just a broken leg, tells reporters her dad is the type of person who
would want to stay in Haiti and help others.
“My dad’s a fighter,” she says. “He’s a stubborn man, and we all
love him for it. He’s going to do whatever it takes.”
At Rabb’s home in Hawthorne, Suzanne Rabb and five of her children
have gone to bed, saddened with the knowledge few people are believed
to have survived the hotel collapse.
Hope persists that all the mission workers injured in Haiti will be
saved. A UMNS photo by Joel Fish.
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When she receives the phone call and learns her husband is a
survivor, she yells, “He’s alive.”
The grown children run in from their bedrooms to the phone, each one
wanting to hear for themselves. In a cacophony of joy, family members
praise God. Suzanne experiences “immediate, absolute ecstasy” in her
soul.
“I’m just so thankful, and I love you so much,” she cries out to her
absent husband.
Underneath the rubble, as firefighters work to free him, Rabb asks a
Times of London reporter to pass on two messages:
“Tell my wife I deeply love her and we’re going to survive this,” he
says.
Rabb cannot see the horror outside the hotel, where more than
200,000 lives have been lost and millions of Haitians are homeless.
Yet he adds:
“I’m praying for all those who did not survive.”
Morning, Jan. 15, New York
Early Friday morning, the hope throughout The United Methodist
Church is that all the injured mission workers, once feared lost, will
be saved.
Dr. Gary Fish is on an overnight flight taking Clara Jean Arnwine to
a hospital in Martinique. Arnwine, a volunteer with a United
Methodist group from Texas, is suffering from injuries that resulted
when part of a United Methodist eye clinic fell on her. She had been
fitting patients with glasses, and had only been in the country for two
days when the earthquake struck.
The United Methodist Committee on Relief announces all six
humanitarian workers at the Hotel Montana have been rescued.
Within 48 hours, three mission workers will be dead.
Tomorrow: Resurrection.
*Briggs is news editor of United Methodist News Service.
News media contact: David Briggs, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5472
or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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