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Family gives thanks that missionary, orphans survived tsunami

Jan. 10, 2005

By Melissa Lauber

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - "The sea is coming!"

These words haunt Diyana Sanders, a member of Grace United Methodist
Church in Gaithersburg, Md. They were spoken by an orphan in Sri Lanka
at 8:45 a.m. on Dec. 26, as one of the deadliest tsunamis in history
approached the orphanage where Diyana's brother, Dayalan Sanders,
worked.

A day so full of tragedy - when at least 150,000 people died - also had
its miracles. For the Sanders family, one of those miracles occurred at
the orphanage.

Diyana's sister, Kanya Sanders Gunaratnam, also a member of Grace
Church, tells the story.

It was the day after Christmas at the Samaritan Children's Home in
Navalady, on the eastern coast of Sri Lanka. Dayalan, a missionary to
his homeland, was going over his sermon for the 28 orphans when two
staff members alerted his wife that something was wrong.

"The sea is coming!" he heard one of the girls cry. He reacted
immediately, and in less than a minute gathered up more than 30 people
and squeezed them into a boat that normally seats 15.

The water was rising. Uncharacteristically, the motor on the boat began
on the first tug of the cord.

"It was God," Diyana said. "The hand of God was everywhere in this."

Especially, she said, when Dayalan decided not to try to outrun the
tsunami but to turn and face the wave.

Kanya continues. The sea was thunderous and black, she said. The water
was destroying buildings around Dayalan and his group. People nearby
were pleading with them for help. Dayalan's group was able to save one
man but had no room in the boat for others.

The children were crying and praying, "God help us." Dayalan remembered
the verse from Isaiah 59:19: "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the
spirit of the Lord shall raise up a standard against it."

He faced the waves, which in some accounts rose more than 20 feet, and
commanded them in Jesus' name to stop, Kanya said. Her brother believes
the waves stalled for an instant, she said.

The boat made it to the opposite shore, to the city of Batticaloa.
Dayalan, his wife and the orphans are staying there with friends and
trying to rent a house.

When the tsunami subsided, Dayalan visited the orphanage. Seeing the
tsunami's destruction made him cry, his mother, Kamalan Sanders, said,
adding that it made her cry too.

When she visited the orphanage a few months ago, flowers bloomed
everywhere, she said. "In the peace there, you didn't even sense the
civil war taking place in the country," she said. On television reports,
she now sees corpses where children once played.

While it breaks their hearts not to be with Dayalan, family members in
Maryland are expressing their love by attempting to raise $400,000 to
build an even larger orphanage.

Funds are pouring in, Diyana said. On Jan. 9, the family held a
fund-raising open house at Grace Church. More than 400 people packed the
fellowship hall, writing checks and bringing in donations from area
businesses, schools and Girl Scout troops.

One donation arrived by letter from William Clay Ford Jr., chairman and
chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co. in Michigan. Ford Motor will
be donating $70,000 to match what the sisters had raised as of Jan. 6.

At the event, Diyana and Kanya told the story again and again. Both said
that in the bustle of raising funds, they had not taken the time to
grieve or to really let the events of the disaster sink in.

When Dayalan's mother saw him on CNN, she wanted to reach out and touch
him. "I wish I was there. He looked so tired," she said.

Ever since he was a boy in Sri Lanka, he has given to people, Kamalan
noted. "We used to find little purses in which he would save up money to
give to the beggars. He took in stray puppies."

Amid their sadness, fear and resolve, the Sanders family is thankful to
God that Dayalan, his wife and the orphans survived, Diyana said.

The tsunami struck a dozen countries around the Indian Ocean, and Sri
Lanka was one of the hardest-hit areas.

Said Dayalan's mother: "Hearts are broken now, but God will mend them."

*Lauber is associate editor of the UMConnection newspaper in the
Baltimore-Washington Conference.

News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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