You know perhaps that our privileged land of Costa Rica
is in possession of 12 volcanoes, whose strange names can
be proudly reeled off to you by the tiniest children, as
one of the glories of their country. Last February one of
these volcanoes, the POAS, erupted slightly, giving off
a rain of ashes.
During the night of 12-13 April, we were suddenly awoken
by the powerful tremor of an earthquake, but this was nothing
new. The mistress in each of the dormitories calmed her
children, and told them to go back to sleep. But a 
second
tremor, on the contrary, obliged us to make them get up,
and thank goodness we did, for almost immediately a third
one, extremely violent, was the signal to rush down from
the dormitories into the recreation yards. Just imagine,
dear Mothers and Sisters, about sixty children, some of
them very tiny, scantily dressed in petticoats and wrapped
up in blankets grabbed from their beds, racing down the
stairs, amid cries of terror. We spent the night, both Sisters
and children, in the yards and gardens, with renewed tremors
nearly every quarter of an hour.
The whole of the first floor was seriously damaged: the
walls completely split in several places, broken arches,
and countless cracks and shaken beams, made it impossible
to live there, so we had to evacuate it completely. The
chapel was particularly badly damaged: the wall at the back
behind the altar was not only split right across in several
places, but was leaning back so much, as also the niche,
that temporary supports had to be put up.
Our daily life returned more or less to normal. On the
evening of 4 May the Sisters were at Adoration, and the
boarders at study, when suddenly at 6.50 a dreadful tremor
in vertical direction, followed by quakes on the ground,
made us all race out into the garden; the children were
crying and screaming, some of them kneeling on the ground
which was still trembling, their arms outstretched in the
form of the cross. Obviously, we had never before experienced
anything so violent, and something terrible must have happened.
The children from Cartago, particularly, who know how dangerous
the IRAZU is for the town because it is so close, were in
panic, thinking of their families. And sure enough, at about
11 o'clock that night, men came on horseback to tell us
that Cartago was now just a heap of ruins.
On the 15th of August, our Mother wanted to give the Blessed
Virgin something as a sign of gratitude for our miraculous
protection, and so a big procession was organized.
