I had just hung up the phone with my wife, Tara, when the Earthquake hit. I had been trying to type in a post about the plight of AIDS and how we should be much more passionate and compassionate about our response to it. I will take that back up again later.

Being from Arkansas and never feeling anything like that, I really don't know what to say about it. Each second the ground shook seemed to last much longer than a second. I didn't notice that things were falling to the floor off of shelves and desks, because all i could think was, are my kids ok, "Get on the floor," is a volcano about to erupt, "Get down, get on the floor," be calm for the kids, when will it stop shaking, it is still shaking, this is for real, why did I hang up the phone with Tara, what do you do when there's no where to go?

Of course, all the circuits were busy so I couldn't get back on the phone with Tara. My kids were pretty good, although Tanner was talking a lot. Which, if you know Tanner, means that he was talking nonstop. Then, you begin to notice that things have moved, like a huge refrigerator, which moved a foot away from the wall. You walk into the bathroom and see all the soap and shampoo bottles in the middle of the tub knocked over. You see that next door your neighbors chest of drawers, which were stacked two high, had fallen over. You hear one of your student neighbors fell out of bed.

Then, as you are collecting yourself, an aftershock hits. Although lasting only a second, it's a reminder that it is all for real. You really were shaken to your core for several seconds just 7 minutes before, but those seven minutes seemed to have lasted 7 hours while your stomach is feeling queasy and it isn't because you need to eat. Probably after an hour of real time you then notice there are hairline cracks in the dry wall throughout the room.

No, we haven't seen any buildings down and we haven't been anywhere to see any road cracks or landslides (there were some!!). But, it still seems crazy that the entire "Earth move[d] under our feet." We are all okay, although now, even 9 hours later, I still have some anxiety. Just ten minutes ago an aftershock hit hard enough to be felt and your heart skips a beat. The below is nothing exciting... no collapsed ceiling, and it can't capture the feeling of the quake, but it is a small reminder of what happened at 7:07 a.m. this morning in Kona!