Off to Tacloban

Tacloban was in the direct path the most recent typhoon to hit the Philippines. Here’s what Wikipedia had to say about this typhoon.

Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, was an exceptionally powerful tropical cyclone that devastated portions of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, in November 8, 2013. It is the deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, killing at least 6,190 people. Haiyan is also the strongest storm recorded at landfall, and unofficially the strongest typhoon ever recorded in terms of wind speed.

Pastor Paul Hansen and I (Pastor Bryan) will be leaving for Tacloban this afternoon. We will first travel to Cebu to meet with Pastor Jay Villegas from Mayorga, Leyte. Leyte was the most hard hit area. Here are some picture of typhoon damage from the area we are going to.

Pastor Jay Villegas pastors the Mayorga church pictured in the slideshow above. He is a primary contact from the area.

It’s been amazing how God brings connections together. Pastor Jay’s aunt lives in Greatfalls, Montana. In addition, the pastor of our fellowship in the barrio we are working in knows Pastor Jay well..

Our prayer is that God will show us how we might be able to help. The truth is that rebuilding after the earthquake and typhoon is going to take years. Yesterday we were a part of a survey team looking at earthquake damaged homes. We looked at four homes and each one will have to be torn down due to the extent of damage from the earthquake. Many of these families live close enough to the poverty line that rebuilding is a monumental task.

That’s where we can help. Right now we are the only agency building transitional homes on the entire island. Others have plans, however, no one has actually started building homes. 9 homes are up right now and 3-4 more are in process. One of those is one that our mission team put up.

We call these homes, transitional homes because they will give people housing for 3-4 years until they can build more suitable long term housing. With maintenance they can last decades.

Each home is 2×4 construction with Galvanized roofing and amacon walls. Bamboo flooring will be installed in most of the homes. We will also provide 4 sheets of roofing to each family who desires to build a small porch onto each house.

Please keep these efforts in prayer. The work here is making a huge difference in lives of those who have lost homes in these recent natural disasters.

If you would like to help support these efforts you can do so by making a donation via this website or via razoo.com.