Two men from Colorado who had never met ended up trapped near each other in a hotel in Haiti when the earthquake hit back January. They helped each other stay alive while trapped under the rubble and Wednesday they met for the first time.

Dan Woolley and Jim Gulley spoke in front of about 100 Colorado Springs residents at the Central United Methodist Church. The two say they will always be friends. The experience they shared is something that has changed both of their lives.

"It's ironic that here probably not more than 20 feet away in Haiti I meet someone from Colorado Springs and I'm from Frisco," said Gulley.

He was also in Haiti doing missionary work and was in the hotel lobby when the quake hit.

"All of a sudden in the next second everything was coming down,” Gulley said.

He and five others were trapped near the reception desk, Woolley was in a nearby elevator shaft.

“We heard his voice in the elevator and then another Haitian man in another elevator, those 8 voices were the only voices that we ever heard," Gulley said.

They never saw each other during those 55 hours, but they were able to pray together and sing.

"Just to know that there were other people there and just having that was encouraging to our spirits," said Woolley.

Gulley says he actually went back to Haiti to help with the clean-up. He stayed in another hotel and while he was there he felt an aftershock and was so frightened he spent the rest of his visit sleeping in a tent.

Both Woolley and Gulley say they plan to write books about their experience.