Remember the 2016 flood in Picton, that had the whole community come together to assist with cleanup? St Mark’s was directly impacted and the response was amazing. Same for all the businesses in town when people assisted. The clean up concluded and things were back to normal relatively quickly.
Now imagine if in the space of 2 months a couple more floods came through of the same size, and an earthquake also occurred on top of that, with both disasters flattening buildings? Imagine if in Picton, livelihoods and lives were lost, and the government did not have adequate funds to provide relief? There’s also no electricity for at least a month or more.
This is what the Philippines has been like the past 2 months, and regularly will bare the brunt of natural disasters that don’t even make the news- typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, making it hard to recover from one thing, before something else comes along. Many provinces were impacted, here’s news from one province:
From a Compassion worker this week on the ground:
“The past typhoon was terrible for Masbate, the whole province was without electricity for a month, except for a few near Masbate City. But the rest of the towns, I’m not sure if there’s electricity yet. I’m about to be transferred to another province called Quezon, but I’m still coordinating relief and financial help for those who lost their house completely”.
We’re currently in chaos, in the Philippines literally and figuratively. As you have seen in the news, our president is in turmoil after being allegedly involved in corruption scandals.
At the same time, we were being buffeted by storms and earthquakes. Continue praying for us. It will be good also to have some blessings for the project staff since they’ve been working hard, while they themselves were also affected heavily with the storm”.
Please pray for communities impacted by recent typhoons and earthquakes in the Philippines, for protection of and rapid relief for 105,040 sponsored children and their families and also unsponsored children being cared for by 470 Compassion church partners as well as many other churches bringing restoration to fragile communities. Perhaps consider giving to the churches caring for the children we support. If you are already a Compassion sponsor you can go to My Account and click on FCP gift. 100% of the value of the donation will go directly to the church partner to assist with their most urgent needs. Alternatively you can give directly to Compassion here: https://www.compassion.com.au/donate.
From your Compassion Representatives,
Debbie (W10 Member) and Spiro (Compassion)
