Rallying to Serve in Chennai

On the evening of December 25, 2004, members of the Chennai First Branch on the east coast of India were enjoying a Christmas activity. Little did they know that the next morning a massive earthquake would occur in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra. The force of the quake radiated out across the ocean, propelling towering walls of seawater toward land. Mountainous waves crashed into towns and villages in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Thailand, flooding streets and leveling homes and buildings. An unknown number of people were missing or dead.

When Elders Alwyn Kilbert and Revanth Nelaballe, missionaries serving in Chennai, arrived at church later that morning, they sensed that something was wrong. At the beach, police officers had set up barricades to keep onlookers back and were patrolling the area on horseback. Along the beach, people were pulling bodies out of the water. The missionaries could see that the water and destruction had reached more than a half a mile (0.8 km) inland from the beach.

That night the Church sent truckloads of supplies from a town nearly 400 miles (640 km) away for the Saints to distribute to those in need in Chennai. In the morning, members and missionaries gathered at the Chennai First Branch meetinghouse to help with a service project organized by the city’s two branches. For the next two days, they assembled and sorted relief kits containing clothing, bedding, hygiene items, and eating utensils.

Since the tsunami hit, Latter-day Saints in the country had been distributing Church-provided goods among the victims. After loading trucks with hundreds of hygiene kits and other supplies, the missionaries and others traveled with President Brent Bonham of the India Bangalore Mission to deliver them to an Indian Red Cross station.

At the station, the man who greeted them recognized their name tags. “Oh, you’re from the Church,” he said. “What did you bring?”

They replied that they had lanterns, hygiene kits, and several tons of clothing. The official was thrilled with the donations and told them to drive the trucks into the facility.

Inside they found people crowding around huge piles of clothing. People from different religions and organizations were also dropping off supplies, and the missionaries spent several hours unloading the trucks and moving the supplies to where they were needed.

As Elder Kilbert looked at the people from different groups, he was struck by how they all worked together out of love for their neighbors. “There are good people everywhere,” he thought.