Fragments of light in a dark time
by John Syratt

On Boxing Day the world woke up to the worst tsunami disaster in history.

The Indian Ocean Earthquake on December 26, 2004 generated tsunamis that claimed the lives of close to 230,000 people, left countless missing, millions homeless and tens of thousands of children orphaned.

A tsunami (pronounced tsoo-NAH-mee), commonly referred to as a tidal wave, is a series of waves, called a wave train, generated in a body of water by a pulsating or abrupt disturbance that vertically displaces the water column.

The giant post-Christmas waves (up to 15m or 50 feet in height) killed close to 31,000 people in Sri Lanka and more than 5,300 in Thailand. India has recorded 10,744 deaths with 5,669 people still missing. Indonesia’s staggering death toll, as of January 19, had risen to 166,320.  More than three weeks after the disaster, officials reported close to 3,500 bodies were being removed each day from the debris in the Indonesian province of Aceh.

Entire villages were erased from the map. The shorelines of popular resort communities were obliterated as beachfront hotels, restaurants and homes disappeared under the power of the raging wall of water. Relief agencies around the globe have been scrambling to help the survivors stay alive by providing food, clean water, medical aid, clothing and shelter. Reports have arisen about the exploitation of the suffering and civil war is threatening relief efforts in some areas.

Amidst all the misery, devastation and confusion brought on by the tumultuous waves that shattered the lives of multitudes, heartwarming miracle stories are surfacing.

In the village of Kuitasuli, on the tiny island of Chowra in the Bay of Bengal, a coconut plantation owner, Jeremiah, and his wife, Safra, were on their way to church with their teenage daughter, Lilian and eight-month-old son, Michael, when the earth started shaking. They began to run but the tsunami outran them.

In an instant they found themselves flailing in the water, helplessly being tossed toward the gnarled debris and hurtling past furniture and TVs floating in the tangled mess. An exhausted Safra lost her grip on Michael and watched in horror as her child drifted away.

With the next wave Michael sank below the surface. Later Safra said at that moment they wanted to die as well and "just flow away with the water."

Then Jeremiah spotted his son’s toes protruding from the swirling surf. He lunged forward and grabbed his son’s toe, and lifted him up. The family survived and Michael only sustained minor injuries.

Just 100 miles north on Hut Bay Island, rickshaw driver Lakshmi Narayan Roy’s wife, Namita, gave birth to a son in the forest, where they had run for shelter.

When the earth shook, Lakshmi quickly put his pregnant wife on his bicycle rickshaw and began the uphill climb to safety. In minutes his home was flattened, like so many others on the island.

Hours later, as they and hundreds more stayed sheltered in the dark forest, Namita began having labor pains. A nurse was located and just after 4 am on Monday the Roys’ second son was born. They eventually made their way to Port Blair hospital and a doctor named the boy "Tsunami." Namita liked the name. "It’s all God’s grace," Lakshmi admitted later.

A 21-year-old Indonesian man, Ari Afrizal, was swept out to sea by the tsunami. He drifted on the Indian Ocean for two weeks living on coconuts that he pried open with his teeth while floating on pieces of wood and later a broken boat before finding an empty fishing raft containing some precious cargo – bottles of water.

All through that time Afrizal was praying. "I prayed and prayed. I told God I don’t want to die," he told reporters. "I worried about my elderly parents and asked for a chance to take care of them."

His prayers were answered when he was spotted by a container ship. They hauled the parched man aboard and took him to Malaysia.

On December 30, a Malaysian tuna ship rescued 24-year-old Malawati, an Indonesian woman swept out to sea by the waves. She managed to stay afloat in shark-infested waters for five days by clinging to a palm tree. Actually, two people were plucked from that palm tree drifting in those deadly waters – Malawati is three months pregnant.

Emerging from the wreckage comes a miraculous tale of survival involving six-year-old Zoe Shiu, who escaped the tragedy that ravaged Thailand’s western coast by clinging to a large, floating sofa cushion.

The little girl, who has US and Thai passports, was playing in the swimming pool of a resort north of Phuket, Thailand when the onrushing waters hit the coast.

She clung on to the cushion, which eventually led her to an overturned boat that a hotel maid was also reaching for. The two managed to turn over the boat and get in. The spunky child is the only one in her family known to have survived and has been flown to Singapore to recover with an aunt.

Dayalan Sanders, left the US in 1997 to become a missionary in Sri Lanka. In a tiny village near Nabalady in the eastern province of Batticoloa, between a lagoon and the Indian Ocean, he founded the Samaritan Children’s Home which houses orphans displaced by a bloody 20-year war.

Tired from a Christmas day event, Sanders forgot to remove the motor from the orphanage’s boat, as he usually did, so it wouldn’t be stolen.

That proved fortuitous because, the next morning, as a 30-foot wall of water headed for shore, the fibreglass boat was ready to go when he, his wife, Kohila, their daughter Hadassah, the staff and 28 orphans scrambled into it. The temperamental engine started right away.

"Be calm. God is with us. Nothing will ever harm us without His permission," Sanders told the occupants of the boat.

He then read verses from the Bible as the wall of water carried the boat helplessly along. Sanders recalled a line from the Book of Isaiah: "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against it."

Facing the danger, he raised his hand in the direction of the flood and shouted, "I command you in the name of Jesus — stop!" The water then seemed to "stall momentarily," he later told the media. "I thought at the time I was imagining things."

Finally, the wave crested and began to recede, dropping the boat and its passengers safely onto the lagoon.

"The children were very frightened," Kohila recalled. "We were praying, ‘God help us, God help us.’"

Once the news of this disaster reached the rest of the world, relief agencies across the globe sprang into action. The Christian community came together in this time of trouble. Prominent Christian aid organizations such as World Vision, Cause Canada, Samaritan’s Purse, Christian Blind Mission International, Canadian Food for the Hungry and many more have all been working tirelessly to help those in need.

Along with all the small miracles of survival, these agencies are helping to make some big miracles happen in the lives of so many.

For information on how you can help bring some miracles into South Asia, click here