
One week ago, Sept. 26, Manila and its neighboring provinces experienced the worst flood in over 40 years. Typhoon Ondoy, (international code name "Ketsana") poured more than a month's worth of rain in six hours, submerging 80% of the city. More rain fell on Manila than what fell on New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It swept away homes, businesses, and people. The official death toll in the Philippines stands at 293. 
I could write pages and pages. What a week it has been. I have been amazed to see...
...all the devastation...cars upended, mud, trash, dead animals, so many homeless, mud, and more mud.
...the resiliency of the Filipino people...even in the worst of times, they still smile, especially the children! They roll up their sleeves and work hard to rebuild their lives. They look for the silver lining in the very dark storm.
...the way everyone has come together to love and serve...the beauty of seeing so many working selflessly side-by-side.
Above is a video montage of news photos taken during the flood.
For us, personally, our home was not touched by the flood waters. But the flood was actually nearby. It rushed down our street for a few minutes before receding. And friends in our subdivision about a mile or less from our house were flooded. While we were extremely thankful to have been spared, we felt so badly by all the suffering around us. We were aching to dive in and help out in the relief effort. Every morning, I woke up and just prayed that the Lord would show us exactly what He wanted us to do that day, and that we would be a blessing, a help to those in need, be His hands and feet in a small way.
The city of Manila was absolutely trashed. The flood waters had just stirred up everything. Everything. And everything was ruined, tossed, mixed with mud, and left in heaps everywhere. People had to dig through what used to be their homes and possessions. Trash heaps lined the muddy streets.

The first few days we helped two families who are friend of ours at the seminary. Both their homes were flooded in the first floor. They lost so many valuable items--numerous books, refrigerators, microwaves, computers...all appliances. They were so gracious and loving, even in their own pain.
One thing we were able to do for one of the families was simply go through one of their files. It was full of all sorts of paper documents. We spent an afternoon carefully peeling the important papers apart and lying them out to dry. There was no room in their house or yard for more things, so we tried laying them on our hot car hood, turning them over and over as the sun and heat dried them. It was amazingly effective!
One day we went to a house that was in an area that had not only been flooded, but an oil company had a leak, so the homes (and even dogs!) in that area were covered with oily dirty residue. It was so awful. Thankfully many people were there to help out. This was the home of an American missionary who is the librarian at Faith Academy. Our family took the room below and simply scrubbed these four walls. Actually, this photo was taken by someone immediately after the waters receded. It wasn't quite this bad when we arrived, so some work had been done before we came. But still, it was awful. There was little running water to even work with. So, the kids took turns running for water and scrubbing.

It was hard to see any progress....but as we kept going...scrubbing and rinsing...scrubbing and rinsing, we finally saw the oily film getting lighter. It was hard work, but actually fun to do as a family.
Here are Corrie and Drew's team outside the house before diving into their work...
Then she helped organize the various supplies...
All the relief work came to a quick halt on Friday because another BIGGER typhoon was headed right towards Manila! Typhoon Parma had grown into the largest category, known as a "Super Typhoon" with winds of over 200 km. As you can imagine, the city of Manila became tense. The government was taking extra precautions. The streets and stores were crowded with people making preparations--buying food, gas, candles, flashlight, batteries, etc. The Christians were also busy P-R-A-Y-I-N-G. Some were also fasting and holding special prayer meetings. We were all praying that the Lord would have mercy on our battered city. So many were still suffering and had only really begun digging out of the mess.
We prayed and waited. Friday night the rains came heavy. It rained hard throughout the night and into Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon it let up. Reports showed that Parma had weakened, sped up (which is wonderful because they were afraid it might stall out over our island, thus increasing the rainfall), and veered to the east, nearly missing our island altogether!
I'm writing this on Saturday night. We know that the most northern part of Luzon received a harder punch from Parma. But we also know that the typhoon DID weaken and DID move away from Manila and the entire island!
A missionary friend here wrote an article detailing the path of the typhoon and how it changed course and weakened in the final day. At the end of his article, he wrote: "In layman’s terms, all but one of the models now agree that it will weaken as it hits the very northeastern tip of Luzon, and slow down and continue weakening, then eventually veer to the east and die in the western Pacific. Is this a coincidence, or has God answered our prayers? I am going with God."
Me too! I think we have just witnessed the hand of God showing us His mercy. We are so thankful! I know many of you joined us in praying for this. Thank you! And thank you ALL for ALL of your prayers. We have felt completely SAFE, BLESSED, LOVED, and at PEACE. Please continue to pray for the Filipino people who have lost so much.
So, next week the clean-up will continue. All our schools will resume classes. Life will go on. But there will always be storms of many kinds in this life, won't there? Let us accept them with God's grace and help. We will not have such storms in Heaven. These are our opportunities to trust Him and glorify Him. In order to do so, we must be sure our lives on built on Christ, the only Solid Rock.
Several times today I've thought of that children's song, "The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock"...
Oh, the rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
The rain came down
And the floods came up
And the wise man's house stood firm.
So, build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ
Build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ
Build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ
And the blessings will come tumbling down.




For five weeks, we ministered on two college campuses in downtown Manila. Since it was summer, there was not the normal number of students on the campus, but we still had an opportunity to do one-on-one evangelism and classroom evangelism to larger groups. I was able to do a “Success” seminar using my corporate background and used that as a platform to share Christ with the students. We also concentrated on mentoring, training, and encouraging the existing student leaders so that they would be refreshed to start ministering when school started up again. In this picture I am conducting a training session on "Having a Vision for Making Disciples".
We really saw God open doors that only he could do. One of the schools was Philippine Christian University. Trust me when I say that the only thing that was “Christian” about the school was its name. The administration wanted to know why we wanted to come to a Christian school to share the Gospel since they were already “Christian”. I later found out that there were professors and deans that were openly gay and professors who taught that the Bible was not to be believed because it is not true. Hey…that reminds me of a number of the universities in the States! God, in His sovereignty, granted us open access to the campus, and we were able to share the Gospel with many students. God is awesome! Some of these students who made decisions are involved in ongoing discipleship and mentoring. Below is a picture of our team on campus with some of the student leaders that we mentored at PCU.
Our team really bonded throughout the internship. Yes, we had conflict and miscommunication, but God used it in each of our lives to help refine us and equip us to better serve Him. Overall, it was a great experience working with the college students and getting to know my teammates on a deeper personal level.
