In the days following Christmas of 2004, our holiday celebrations turned to sorrow and disbelief as we watched the events in South Asia unfold on our television screens. A tsunami triggered by an earthquake had devastated the coasts of several countries, killing thousands and leaving millions homeless. The enormity of the disaster was beyond comprehension, and many of us turned off the news and forced the images from our minds. Even just thinking about the overwhelming suffering and pain occurring on the other side of the world seemed unbearable.

The epicenter of the earthquake, the largest since 1964 with a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, struck only 100 miles off the western island of Sumatra in Indonesia. This country was most affected by the tsunami, where the deadly waves killed 150,000 people and displaced over 400,000 men, women, and children from their homes. The quake forced a giant wall of seawater onto the shores, sweeping a path of death and destruction up to five miles inland. When the ocean receded, it had completely destroyed entire villages, killed thousands, and devastated the lives of every survivor. Eyewitnesses have compared the damage in the "ground zero" area of Banda-Aceh to that of Hiroshima, Japan after it was demolished by an atomic bomb during World War II. People lost their communities, their homes, their belongings, their livelihoods, and even their loved ones. What remained was a shattered world that truly seemed without hope.