All Eyes on Chile!

I don't know about you all, readers, but I have been sitting on the edge of my seat watching these miners being pulled to safety in that tiny little capsule. What joy that they are all out safely with NO PROBLEMS! What I love most about the coverage has been the place of God in the story - at the beginning and the end! Above is Esteban Rojas who knelt to the ground to pray after he emerged from that capsule. According to CNN,

Rojas' wife Jessica Yanez grasped onto a religious tapestry with Mary on it as she awaited to see her husband - the 18th man to be lifted from underground.

As soon as he exited the capsule Rojas too knelt down on the ground, clasped his hands in prayer and lifted his hands to the sky to praise God. His wife then wrapped the tapestry around him as they hugged and cried as workers rallied in a Chile chant.

A friend of mine also passed on this news story to me. In this article,

Jimmy Sanchez, one of the 33 Chilean miners who have been trapped for over two months in the San Jose copper-gold mine in the Atacama Desert, would like to make one small correction to all the stories about life in the mine:

“There are actually 34 of us,” the nineteen-year-old miner wrote in a letter sent up from the mine on Tuesday, "because God has never left us down here."

What joy! God is so good - so many prayers poured out for these men. One thing this shows in a way words just cannot express - life is good, precious, worthy and so very BEAUTIFUL! Let's bask in it!

Here are the men from a BBC article


Florencio Avalos (31), Mario Sepulveda (39), Juan Illanes (51), Carlos Mamani (23), Jimmy Sanchez (19), Osman Araya (30), Jose Ojeda (46), Claudio Yanez (34), Mario Gomez (63), Alex Vega (31), Jorge Galleguillos (56), Edison Pena (34), Carlos Barrios (27), Victor Zamora (33), Victor Segovia (48), Daniel Herrera (27), Omar Reygadas (56), Esteban Rojas (44), Pablo Rojas (45), Dario Segovia (48), Yonni Barrios (50), Samuel Avalos (43), Carlos Bugueno (27), Jose Henriquez (54), Renan Avalos (29), Claudio Acuna, (35), Franklin Lobos (53), Richard Villarroel (27), Juan Aguilar (49), Raul Bustos (40), Pedro Cortez (24), Ariel Ticona (29), Luis Urzua (54)