I am an Italian citizen living in Germany. Because I consider it not sufficient to just make a donation for the tsunami victims, I've decided to put my emotions into words.

My wife and I visited very often to your region and spent a wonderful time there. In Sri Lanka, South India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, we always found very peaceful, friendly and lovable people. These places are all in our hearts. For us it was like home.

After this horrible and unbelievable disaster and after we saw the pictures of the areas showing the complete destruction of all your homes, we cried bitterly at your tragedy. In our minds, we join you in lamenting the thousands of missing men, women and children.

We do not know all of them, but we are sure that they were as kind and likeable as the ones we met during our journeys. We, too, have lost in each of them a friend and we can not describe the dolour we feel.

Our donation and the ones from people all around the world are but a drop in the ocean. We are all paralysed and we do not know how we can alleviate the pain in your hearts. The only way we have found is to use these words to express our oneness with your pain and suffering caused by this inconceivable disaster.

We are sure God will help and support you during these very painful times.

We mourn together with you, we would like to comfort your abandoned children, we would like to wipe off the teardrops of your faces, we will help you in the reconstruction of your homes and we will try to be by your side to help you up again.

We would like to have very, very long arms to be able to embrace all of you but while this may be impossible you can be sure that our prayers, thoughts and actions will always be with you on your path towards recovery.

You will overcome.