Jimmy Sánchez, 19-Year-Old Trapped Chile Miner: 'God Wanted Me To Stay Here'

A tense two-month odyssey is finally nearing an end for 33 Chilean miners trapped underground. The first miners should be extracted on Wednesday, the AP reports.

The experience has had a profound impact on the miners. For a glimpse into their feelings, a letter from 19-year-old Jimmy Sánchez speaks volumes.

Sánchez, one of the 33 trapped miners, wrote the following to a relative (originally posted here). It is translated from Spanish (hat tip @ralamosm):

"Hi Roxana, I'm very good. I'm not nervous yet. I believe that when my turn comes (to get up on the capsule) nerves will attack me badly. But now I'm happy and calm. I have been always this way. And yes, it's been since August the 4th that I have not see you. That was 2 months and some days ago.

But for me it's like it was yesterday that we got caught here. God wanted me to stay here, I don't know, maybe so I change from now on. I have thought and I'll change a lot. I have suffered too much and don't want to suffer any more. In the hard moments I was thankful of God because I got a daugther. I expect than when my turn arrives everything will be ok. Hugs for everyone."

Comments

[70sFez]

02:39 PM on 10/14/2010

That god character is one nice dude. Look at how many limbs god has regrown for amputees. What an entity.

[Lefty83]

01:47 PM on 10/14/2010

Put this dude back in and have him pray to god to get him out. Let's see how it works out for him.

[TYRANNASAURUS]

11:52 AM on 10/14/2010

Jimmy Sánchez, 19-Year-Old Trapped Chile Miner: 'God Wanted Me To Stay Here'....

I THINK THIS GUY WAS BREATHING TOO MUCH NITROGEN....

[tanya1111]

10:47 AM on 10/14/2010

They should just make a book of their letter and agree to never discuss what happened. Every one would buy it and they would feel they saved their sanity by not reliving it again and again.

[Whinger]

10:20 AM on 10/14/2010

Yeah, well, to yourself be true!

[d1sergo]

08:15 PM on 10/13/2010

A person who uses God as a means to live and love will always be the better man than the atheist who uses their belief as an excuse to hate. I say this as an atheist for what its worth.

[WeCanDoMore]

08:28 PM on 10/13/2010

WHo hates? Not athiests. We have frustraiotn with fundimentlaists who gain pwoer, as we ebluve they are not in realtiy, and that the problems facing our world are diffcult, we need samrt, realistic people working together to solve them.
I can live and love just fine, sans a defined God. Giving people are good people, religious or not.
Religious people are fine with me, as long as they don't try and legislate, draft textbooks, or thwart science, which is my religion. I don't need to convert them, and I would hope visa versa. They are the ones who kill for their beliefs, which might not even be based in hatred, but in their version interpretation of an ancient text. They can't all be right, but evidently they are all worth dying over.

Fundamentalist relious people do. They think everyone else is going to h3ll

[methinks9]

12:33 AM on 10/14/2010

Sir/Madam,
With respect, I'd like to tell you that if there were God, such tragedy wouldn't occur in the first place; as God has been described as one who sees the past, present and future. By the same token, no hurricane would ever engulf and sweep away people, no landslide would bury people ever, no mechanical failure would plummet a flying plane down to the ocean. God is just a myth manufactured by those who fear void--that lacks center that would function as a reference point in their life.

As no parent on this planet would ever wait and see their children suffer, so would be God, if humans were his creation. God could not sleep in silence while his children suffer. He doesn't exist. He started existing since the religious folks manufactured the rhetoric of God and it entered into the consciousness of the community. So the notion of god is a "phantom created in the brain of man"!

[furby4]

12:06 PM on 10/13/2010

When tragedy strikes, religion rears its stubborn head. A very capable American drilling expert gave those miners an excellent chance of surviving their ordeal, not man's countless gods.

[HorseChowda]

01:33 PM on 10/14/2010

I truly hate when, for example, someone survives an incredibly complicated and dangerous operation -- and the first thing that comes out of their mouth is "I want to thank God!". Meanwhile the surgeons who spent 16 hours on their feet staring into their insides, literally with their life in their hands, get no credit.

[Ohene]

08:30 AM on 10/13/2010

Only in the situation of ultimate anxiety, despair, desperation and meaninglessness that we are driven to the power of ultimate being and truth: God. Of course, such a situation can crush us to ultimate destruction, leading us from faith in a living God to death through suicide; that is the path of Albert Camus. However, when we are forced to the boundary of existence, on the edge of abyss, where all human possibilities seem lost, there is where a new possibility can arise and gain power. Faith can triumph over despair and cynicism and resignation. A new life can emerge.

That is the central message of Jesus of Nazareth; not the lies American evangelicals are spewing up.

I am happy for this 19-year-old man.

[davidabheeru]

10:54 AM on 10/13/2010

Thank you. Amen.

[tanya1111]

10:55 AM on 10/14/2010

Damn every post you write is about Camus, get over it! Yesterday I was going to end up like Camus for making a joke about afghanistan... Is that like the only ting you learned in school? Everybody finds their own path = You don't commit suicide OR find god, it is not like those are the ONLY TWO options. Plenty of people lead productive fulfilled lives with beauty and love without any imaginary friends what so ever. You don't need faith. You just need strength, and you can find that in yourself you don't need a "god" to do it for you.

[Elyse Morris]

02:04 AM on 10/18/2010

Yes you are right. Plenty ppl do live productive lives, but are they REALLY fulfilled? I not only think that everyone needs faith, but every1 has some measure of faith and every1 puts their faith in something. Everyone worships something: family, their possessions, their habits, their knowledge, their ego. Everyone puts their faith in something.

[SegoLily1]

10:19 PM on 10/12/2010

D&C 122 (1839)
5 If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;
6 If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;
7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.
8 The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?
9 Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall bremain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.

[Tom Vilot]

01:35 AM on 10/13/2010

Yeah, well. Meanwhile: "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. -- Deuteronomy 21:18-21"

Stone your children to death. Wow .... what a great source of moral guidance.

[rundog]

06:59 AM on 10/13/2010

It is a metaphor. Most believers don't take the bible at face value. It s a book of stories to teach us through mythology. How many parents have said I am at my wits end with my kid and ask friends or the community to help talk some sense into him. Or parents of an adult drunkard send him into treatment so other adults can help him.

[Con Heartist]

02:02 PM on 10/13/2010

Blah, blah, blah ... can't you think and speak as yourself?

[infodoc1]

10:14 PM on 10/12/2010

I would imagine that the experience gave them plenty of time to reflect

[bogey1]

09:12 PM on 10/12/2010

this experience and his letter should be required reading for all employees of wall street and all students of business schools

[themodernleader]

08:18 PM on 10/12/2010

Traditionally led people are told that extraordinary events are the result of their deity. In the instance of the entrappment of these miners it was probably the motive of greed and the fast buck and lack of any worthwhile regulation. In our world of plutocracy and finance, human workers are the cheapest commodity.

[TheIndependenceParty]

07:03 PM on 10/12/2010

The lesson in the survival of these miners is that we all need one another, ... to survive hardship together, and to create solutions to alleviate the suffering of other human beings and safeguard the lives of others and their own.

Good work, .. and Godspeed coming up.

[Kael Mc]

02:48 AM on 10/13/2010

Amen.These men have truly endured a feat the magnitude of which most people could never conceive of. I pray very hard for the safety and comfort of these people and their families.

[bigcypress]

06:52 PM on 10/12/2010

"God wanted me to stay here, I don't know, maybe so I change from now on. I have thought and I'll change a lot."

~ Jimmy Sánchez

Maybe Jimmy is down there because of God, or human mistakes, or just the randomness of life. But he is there, and he is using this moment to reevaluate his life and remake it for the better. Godspeed Jimmy.

[SegoLily1]

10:05 PM on 10/12/2010

"All these experiences shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man has descended below them all, art thou greater than he?"

D&C 122

[skunky93]

07:57 AM on 10/13/2010

OH shut the front door. Keep that cr*p to yourself.

[Shawn Wolfe]

06:43 PM on 10/12/2010

These men have will of steel.... God bless them and theirs.. Spirituality.. religion whatever.. I would have never survived down there.

[Grant in Calgary]

09:07 PM on 10/12/2010

Nor would I. Thanks for being honest.

[getoffmyside]

09:37 PM on 10/12/2010

Nor I.