Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Woman Waits to Hear from Missing Family Members in City Affected by Super Typhoon Haiyan
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
AFTON, VA
(ANS) – “Please help my people,” cries Marlou Barredo, wife of the Co-founder and President of Advancing Native Missions in Afton, Virginia, who was born and raised in Tacloban City, Philippines, a city recently destroyed by Super Typhoon Haiyan.
A desperate appeal
Marlou Barredo has many family members and friends in Tacloban and across Leyte Island, none of whom she has heard from since Typhoon Haiyan hit.
According to a news release, Super Typhoon Haiyan, also called Yolanda, made landfall in the Philippines on the morning of Friday, November 8. With sustained winds of 195 m.p.h. and gusts as high as 235 m.p.h., Haiyan was equivalent in force to an exceptionally strong category 5 hurricane in the US.
It has been called the most powerful tropical storm ever to make landfall anywhere in the world. The results were devastating: thousands dead, many more thousands displaced, infrastructure ruined, homes and possessions swept away or destroyed.
Advancing Native Missions serves over 30 ministries in the Philippines and several of these ministries are in the areas where Haiyan’s effects were greatest. One of Advancing Native Missions’ partners reported in an email, “We are devastated. Tacloban is like a ghost town, but I am assured that the Lord will not leave us nor forsake us. There is no more water. I think we will still have food until Tuesday. Total blackout, many dead. I have been manning the health post for the past three days. Thank God we are alive. Pray for sustenance and the recovery period.”
Rescuers at work during the typhoon
Advancing Native Missions said in its news release that it is collecting funds to send to ministry partners who were already on the ground when the storm hit. There are two medical missions teams currently reaching out to those in need of medical attention as well as other teams searching for missing people, providing shelter, food, and other necessities.
The need is great and they will soon run out of resources. Advancing Native Missions is asking Americans to be part of the recovery through their prayers and financial gifts.
Advancing Native Missions (www.advancingnativemissions.com) is a US-based agency called to seek out, evaluate, and equip indigenous mission groups throughout the world in order to hasten global evangelization.
For updates and prayer requests visit: www.advancingnativemissions.com/supertyphoon
To schedule an interview contact Oliver Asher at 540-456-7111 ext.119 or oliver@advancingnativemissions.com
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Dan Wooding, 72, is an award-winning journalist who who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 50 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called “Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary”. (Click to order)
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<!–BYLINE:By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries–>