What if one night while you slept, a huge wall of water
poured in under the bridge you called ‘home’ and washed away every single thing
you had to call your own in the world?
During the night of last December 16th, this is what
happened in the world of many, many people living in Cagayan along the
riverside and under the bridges. A massive relief operation involving the
evacuation of 100,000 people occurred on the morning of December 17, 2011.
You might remember our account of the things we witnessed
while we tried to help the victims of the flood.........young people like this
boy on the left, trying to dig through the tangled rubble at the side of the
river hoping to find some remnant of his home.
People finding their dead laid out in grotesque piles at the
city’s morgues, people sitting on sidewalks dazed or weeping, refugees in
hastily erected shelters.....mud and debris and stench everywhere.
There were so many horrifying scenes, and even after we had
come back home to Lapoc our hearts were back with the thousands we had seen in
such tragic circumstances. We kept thinking about the faces we’d seen, the
anguish and the hopelessness.
And then the Lord gave us a surprise and started to send in
finances to help the flood victims and after He had provided the money, He then
led us to some families who a pastor had been doing outreach with before the
flood. This pastor had gone and found them under the bridge where they lived in
poverty and started bible studies with them.
Now here they were, homeless, and refugees, a little flock
of the Lord’s people who He brought to us out of the thousands. They were a
motley sort of crowd. Some of them had been saved out of prostitution, one was
an ex-gangster and the 13 other members of his old gang were all dead, others
had grown up as street kids – just the sort of needy people that Jesus loves
and that He would have been spending time with while He walked this earth as a
man.
The building of homes for these families has been a 6 month
long project that started on January 18th and was finished just last
week and we are so thrilled with the results and with this little community of
families who have their own homes now – ‘real’ homes like they never even dared
to dream they would have while they were still living in little hovels with the
bridge as their roof.
God brought something good out of the tragic flood for these
13 families. Last week as we walked amongst them and looked into their eyes and
saw them living in their new homes and saw the children just so, so
happy.......well, it absolutely melted our hearts with joy and we wanted to
share some of the photos and some of this joy with you!!
We praise God for His provision and we praise Him that we
could be a conduit for Him to see houses built for these 13 families and all
the children that are part of these families. Thank you to all of you as well
who had a part in this – our partnership in this was just absolutely an awesome
experience for us!!!
