By now you are probably aware of the horrible storm that hit the Philippines on Saturday.

Ondoy (as its known in the Philippines) dumped a month’s worth of rain in 6 hours leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.   

The death toll is far from complete and so many are still buried in mud, but as I write over 200 bodies have been recovered. It's just the beginning.

I wanted to get the word out quickly that we are all OK at Safe Refuge,  but the disaster is every bit as bad as it appears in the news.  

They say calamity causes our brains to work differently and  I’ve seen how much that’s true. My brain has been organizing the past few days into images like photographs.  First is the lovely image of scooping buckets of putrid water out of our front door into the lake that was once our walkway. Then there is the image of me wading through high water crowded by trash, sewage, floating roaches and rodents just to try and buy candles.  I remember feeling the electrical wires under my feet.  I also see a picture of the worried faces of our girls gathered around the emergency radio listening to reports of devastation, concerned for loved ones.  I can also see the image of trucks full of people in life vests passing by.

There aren’t really words to describe what it’s like to see bodies of small children pulled from mud; there are lines and lines of bodies with no funds for burial and many not yet identified. It is beyond overwhelming. We are still waiting to hear from all our former residents who are located in areas where there has been severe loss of life.

By God's Grace, Safe Refuge is located on high ground, but at the market just 5 minutes walk away many drowned in the flooding. Bodies are still being recovered and a patient and dear friend was stranded on the top floor of the marketplace all day and night Saturday until rescuers in boats made a way for her and her co-workers to get out. We are still thanking God that she was protected! Her children were with their grandmother stranded inside a bus for 2 days and their house was filled with mud and water but we were just able to reach them and they are OK.

My own apartment was flooded, but Marybeth and I stayed at Safe Refuge with all our many residents, women and children, through the storm. 

As the flooding is going down in some places we are beginning to see the widespread devastation that will not recede with the water.  No one was prepared for the storm because here the weather forecasting technology is decades behind. The lines for food and supplies are hours long. Worse, many people are not able to even access those lines because they have no money, costs have risen and the food supplies are very limited. 

As a Floridian, I have experienced storms. But this is an entirely different level of desperation and hopelessness.  So many of the people who have lost everything were already living from meal to meal. This makes the fact that over 820 million pesos worth of crops have been damaged in a nation where food shortages and disease are already rampant, so much more devastating.

But God has not stopped his work!  In the midst of it all we had the great honor and privilege of leading our newest resident, Sallie, to Jesus today. Beyond the flood and the devastation I know how important it is to continue on in what God has called us to do.

The words to the song  “When All is Said and Done” by Matt Redman come to my mind.

Life’s too short to be lukewarm.  Jesus you can have it all. My every breath my every breath, I need your power to live this life. This I know, this I know. I can’t do this by myself, you’re Christ in me. My only hope my only hope. As I walk this broken world tune my life to heaven’s song for I am yours. And when all is said and done tune my life to heavens song forevermore.”  

And I know that’s what it looks like when all is said and done: tuning our lives to His heartbeat is why we do this. As there is so much sadness and grief we still remember to rejoice with all of heaven when one comes to know Jesus!

Pray that God opens more doors and provides more resources for us to be able to reach the ones He brings to us in the midst of this tragedy.  Pray for protection from disease and the chaos all around us.

Also please pray for protection as two more storms are predicted to hit the Philippines in the next week. After an intense rainy season, and the devastation from last week’s storm it is terrifying to imagine more storms.

Our girls have been through things in their lives that most of us can never imagine.  Yet I see in our girls a growing trust and awareness of how safe they are now.  

I have one more image in my mind.  On Saturday night; 17 year old Stephany was sitting  in the candlelight holding her 2 week old baby, James. She was talking about the flooding where she lived before and how grateful she was to God that now she and James were safe.

Thank you for helping make that possible. 

Love,

Naomi