Kathy Headlee, the founder of Mothers Without Borders, had organized the trip and recruited her sister Carolyn Sharette, a registered nurse, and Nielsen to accompany her. The three have experience helping orphaned and disadvantaged children. Each year they lead dozens of volunteers who pay thousands of dollars to travel to Africa, where they spend their vacation time building schools or teaching mothers to crochet. They're used to traveling to remote areas but not disaster zones.

Now, they were at ground zero of the Southeast Asian tsunamis, witnessing first-hand devastation not seen in generations. The city they had traveled to sits on the northern end of the Sumatra Island. The provincial capital of Aceh was one of the first places hit by the tsunami, which was triggered by a 9.0 earthquake on Dec. 26 in the Indian Ocean.

Besides killing tens of thousands and leaving many thousands more homeless, the monstrous waves washed away almost the entire downtown and commercial district of this city, as well as more than three miles of dense residential housing. This city that had been off limits to foreigners for three years because of an intense separatist movement was now temporarily open to international relief efforts. Most who had come to dig through the rubble, clean up the bodies, and assist the tens of thousands of homeless were military, U.S. military.

"How many children are here?" Headlee asked the tired women who greeted the small Utah group as they walked toward a set of buildings.

"One hundred sixty," replied a young local doctor who accompanied the relief workers. Headlee, Nielsen and Sharette had met up with a team from Project Concern, International as soon as they arrived in Banda Aceh. Part of the PCI group were two local doctors and a nurse whose hospital was destroyed by the tsunami. The medical team accompanied the Utah women as they traveled to camps of displaced Indonesians.

"Of the 160, how many lost parents?" Headlee asked. The male doctor asked the so-called camp chief to look through his notebook of the people registered to live here. One page listed the newborns, the next page was for 1-year-olds, and so on. "Fifteen," replied the doctor, for this camp.

Immediately outside the room where the camp chief sat, were women looking after a crowd of children. Nielsen walked into the camp first, carrying Ziplock bags full of plastic beaded bracelets and necklaces made by a group of Salem, Utah, women. As soon as the young girls in this trash-littered camp spotted the goods they quickly approached Nielsen.