Wednesday, November 13, 2013

          Today, I’m going to share a letter we received from a missionary couple in Cebu, Philippines.

It has been quite a month with a 7.3 earthquake with the epicenter 30 miles away and then the super typhoon; but we are all well. The patron house is very solid and secure and sustained very minimal damage. The worst damage to the temple was the Angel Moroni.  During the earthquake He was dancing around and ended up pointing south.  The bottom was rounded off where it is secured to the counterweight.  When the winds came from the typhoon, it magnified the problem and any strong gust of wind would move it.  It went from pointing south to northeast, it moved about 130 degrees and then there was a water leak through the attachment of the statue.

            There have been several inspiring moments as we watched the relief efforts. Our stake was asked to build 5,000 hygiene kits and 1,000 food kits for the people in Bohol, where the earthquake was.  The enthusiasm of the Filipinos was incredible and even the children got involved in filling the bags and everyone was smiling at the opportunity to serve.

They combined the Sacrament meetings of the four wards that meet in the stake center which is right across the parking lot from us.  Two wards that meet in the morning combined and they canceled S.S. and R.S. and Priesthood meetings and then worked on building the kits. The afternoon wards did the same. Then we did the same thing this week, except we did 3,000 food kits and I'm sure we will be called upon to do more.

Then last night they brought in 60 missionaries, the first ones to be evacuated from the area affected by the storm [typhoon Haiyan].  Many had left everything behind, including their identification.  Several said they only left with their journals.  We fed them in the patron house. Sister Henthorn baked 8 dozen cookies and a couple of other sisters baked some also. Then we temple missionaries opened up our apartments so they could Skype or use Magicjack to call their families.

We helped them get new garments, we donated some white shirts that I had brought over and then put them to bed.  Sister Henthorn and a couple of other sisters washed about 10 loads of clothes while they slept and folded them for them as they left at 5:30 this morning to head to the area presidency in Manila where they will all meet with psychologists before being spread out to other areas.  

We got to bed at 4:30 this morning, then got a call at 6:30 as a sister missionary left her purse in our room.  Then our daughter called at 8:30, so now we're up for the day; we work in the temple this afternoon.

Several [of these young missionaries] said they saw many dead bodies with some hanging in the branches of trees—pretty traumatizing stuff.  But of 250 missionaries, the only injury was a snake bite and there were no deaths--basically pretty amazing stuff.  Many of them were more sad about leaving their friends and families in Ormoc knowing they were basically abandoning them.  These young missionaries are phenomenal!  We are expecting more to come in today.

            Thank you for your concern.  We did have some very strong winds, but the main part of the storm missed us [in Cebu] by 60 miles. We have another typhoon heading toward us this week, but much milder. Give our love to all!

            Keith & Rusti Henthorn