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Monday, 11 November 2013
The aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan: what are we doing?
Thank you for the prayers and concern regarding the terrible Typhoon that swept through the Philippines Friday morning. We, in Manila, have not been affected by the storm. Friday was a rainy windy day, reminding us of the disaster looming south of us. And now, as we read the news reports, we are seeing how terrible the devastation is in the central islands of the Philippines. As I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, government officials are estimating that 10,000 people were killed in the Island of Leyte, where it struck hardest. One of our Peace Church members has lost an Aunt and a cousin. Another Peace Church member has still not been able to contact their family there. And we have a friend who moved there a few months ago and have no contact with her yet either.
Peacebuilders Community staff, with the leadership of Mennonite Church Canada worker, Dann Pantoja, will be heading to the hardest hit area (on Wednesday) to do relief and assessment work and we are sending three Peace Church members to join them. The team will work under the larger umbrella of Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches. Their plan includes the following (from Dann Pantoja’s Facebook status)…
Our mission:
1. To help in the rapid assessment together with the government, church, and civil societies;
2. To help train churches to organize their people for disaster response and develop an effective and efficient plan;
3. To help local incident command posts in mapping out and in prioritizing relief distribution.
Please pray for the team- they’ll be leaving tomorrow (Tuesday) night. And pray for the many people who are in desperate need of food and medical attention. Pray for the thousands of people who are mourning the death of countless friends and family, their homes, livelihood and stability. We cry to Jesus as we grieve the terrible devastation this country we love has been hit with.
*We are working on setting up a link to receive donations from North America and will let you know as soon as that’s set up… hopefully within a couple days.