NEW Earthquake Update

A 7.1 earthquake struck overnight about 400 miles from where we are. We are fine, there's no problem here where we are.

I've included a screenshot from an earthquake app on my iPad, showing our location with a little blue ball and the epicenter of the earthquake marked by a "7.1" inside a little red balloon. A 7.1 earthquake is fairly powerful, although it is almost 1000 times less powerful than the 9.0 that caused the devastating tsunami in March of 2011. That means it would require almost 1000 of the same magnitude of earthquake as happened last night to release the same amount of energy released in the Great Tohoku Earthquake. It's hard to imagine! Interestingly enough, scientists here say that this morning's earthquake was an aftershock related to the Great Tohoku Quake.

Japanese people think about the magnitude of earthquakes more in terms of how much shaking they generate. There is an entirely different system for measuring shaking. The map pictured below shows a "shake map" for last night's earthquake. As you can see, most of the shaking that took place last night registered as a 3. Here where we are it looks more like a 2. However, for Dale, it might as well have been a 10. She woke up a little frightened from the shaking. For me, on the other hand, it was a 0; I slept through it.

Thanks for thinking of us and praying for Japan! Bible historians tell us that a great earthquake struck Nineveh around the time God told Jonah to go there. It seems that God used the earthquake to prepare the people of Nineveh to receive Jonah's message. If God wanted to use earthquakes for the same purpose here, there sure are plenty of opportunities for it. Please pray for the invitations we've been given recently to make Gospel presentations with non-Christians. We're asking the Lord for a different kind of shaking as his Word goes out!