The
sky was blanketed with clouds so I couldn’t see the devastation as I looked
down from the window of my plane. I
wondered what it would look like in person.
Would it look like the images I had seen on television and the
Internet? Circumstances had prevented us
from getting there earlier and I thought that a lot of the damage would be
hidden or at least cleaned up by now since it had been about two months since Typhoon
Yolanda had struck.
Once the plane broke through the
clouds I saw the ocean, the edge of Leyte Island and mountains covered in
tropical forest. As our aircraft banked
left, parts of the city came into view.
We descended lower and I began to see some signs of damage. Palm trees that looked as if they had been
licked by the wind. Piles of twisted
metal and damaged homes began to emerge.
Because the airport was on the edge of the town, this was only a glimpse
of what was to come.
Pastor
Rey Farol, Chad Dexter and I (Sean Ransom) landed at the Tacloban airport in the
early afternoon. After taken dozens of
flights over the last 25 years of my life, this landing was the roughest I had
ever experienced. When the plane touched
down, it made several loud jarring noises and then came to an abrupt stop. I had to put my hand on the seat in front of
me to stop my forward momentum. Once we
reached the end of the runway’s single landing strip, we made a U-turn. As we taxied back to the terminal I could see
what had cause the hard landing. Even
thought the Tacloban airport had been cleaned up and re-opened, the scares from
the Typhoon remained. First I noticed a few pieces of sea wall that
must have weighed several tons lying broken along side of the runway. It appeared that they had been tossed like a
child’s toy as they rested several yards away from their places in the sea wall.
After this, the potholes in the runway
became visible; this explained our rough landing.
 |
| Bagage claim at the Tacloban airport |
As
we deplaned I saw that most of the walls of the terminal were gone and that in
some places, you could see through the terminal to the parking lot and
reception area. The metal roof was
repaired and reinforced, but a lot of work was left to be done in rebuilding
the Tacloban airport. We all gathered
around the remnants of the baggage carousel and waited for our bags. With no walls, we could see the plane being
unloaded and small carts bringing our possession over to us.
We went straight from the airport to
a restaurant that had 21 pastors waiting to meet us and tell us their
stories.
 |
| Our first meeting with pastors in Tacloban |
As the pastors began to share
what they had gone through I began to realize how great their needs are and how
great our need would be for God’s wisdom as to best help minister to these men
and their churches.
 |
| Pastor Reymond |
Of
the many stories we heard that day, Pastor Reymond’s story touched my heart the
most. As His family and other church
members sought refuge from Yolanda, they thought it best to ride it out in
their church building because it was made of cement blocks, reinforced by
steel. I’m sure they reasoned that this
would be safer than their less fortified homes.
Their thinking was right when it came to the almost 200mph winds, but
they did not anticipate that the sea it self would rise up and attack the
shore. Someone said that the water was
higher than the palm trees, which stretch 3-4 stories high.
As
the water rushed into their church the people scrambled to get above the
water. They climbed into the rafters to
get away, but many were not fast enough or strong enough. I can only image the horror that Pastor
Reymond witnessed as the storm surge carried off his two daughters, his wife,
mother in-law, father and two brothers.
I asked one pastor if they were carried out to sea.
He
said that they do not know if their bodies are at rest in the ocean, one of the
cities mass graves or under one of the thousands of piles of debris throughout
Tacloban. I was told that Pastor Reymond
was silent for several days, probably in shock as he processed what had
happened. As he shared his story with
us, he smiled and thanked God. He had a
peace that surpassed understanding. A
peace that is impossible to have without the gracious and comforting hand of
God upon you. My mind shifted as he
spoke, what would I have done if I were in the situation? How would I handle it afterwards? Could I?
Pastor Reymond shared that he thanks God that He is still alive to make
Him known.
He
went on to describe how he and his members began to pick up the pieces of their
lives by rebuilding the church and each other.
He and several other pastors repeated what became a theme, the Typhoon
was causing many people to turn to God and their destroyed churches were
actually growing.
Another
common story that we heard from these pastors was that their homes were destroyed
so they, their families and many of their members were living in what remained
of their church buildings, with many of them having to sleep on the floor.
This pastor stands with his family where their Church meets
Others pastors shared how it was their
churches that had been destroyed and that now, their homes served as the places
where their churches gather together to worship the Lord. Still for others, their homes and churches
were destroyed and they either meet in the homes of members, under tarps and
temporary structures or have paused corporate worship altogether until they can
rebuild a place to gather. ...To be continued.
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