A week or so ago, the moon looked exceptionally larger and brighter than nights past, a super moon they called it, but it was only visible here for about three hours before it retreated back into space growing smaller and dimmer. As we rode back in a tuk-tuk late one night, I looked out through a break in the palm trees to the ocean, the super moon cast an eerie glow over the calm waters. It was exactly how I imagine the spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep right before the whole world was set into motion, just the light of the Lord in the nothingness and suspense. As we passed by, I watched, half expecting a voice to utter “let there be light”, but nothing, only a lone fisherman in his boat danced in the spotlight, and then the moon disappeared behind a cloud.
Three years ago there was no super moon here, but rather, a super typhoon. Her name was Yolanda and her wrath was great. She brought with her a storm surge, three waves, nearly ten meters in height, that reached into the land like a poker player sweeping the pot into their grasp, except Yolanda was sweeping in trees, houses, and people. She took 10,000 lives on that November day.
A twenty-minute drive from our house there is a mass grave for some of the victims of the storm. 5,000 bodies buried under 3,000 crosses. Friends and family members have scrawled names across the white crosses; flowers and pictures decorated some. Two crosses that stood side by side bore pictures of a brother and sister; neither of them could have been more than eight years old. But our friend Ira said that there is really no way of knowing whether or not the body of their beloved is actually in the grave at all, but the hope that they are provides some closure. Rain fell as I we looked out into the field of crosses. Leo stood behind me; I listened as he shared his Yolanda experience with the other girls.
A storm surge warning was issued to the community, but without the words to translate this phenomenon from English into their native tongue, many didn’t evacuate. They’d weathered many storms before Yolanda, but none that caused a storm surge. Leo’s family was one of the hundreds that stayed, without a place to evacuate or a way to leave town, there was really no other choice. Leaving also left their home open to looters that would arrive with the storm. The storm’s surge came in three waves, each bigger and angrier and more powerful than the last. Leo’s family climbed up to the rafters of their home to escape the rising water, Yolanda had already taken the liberty of ripping the roof right off so they stood unprotected in nearly 200mph hour winds that whipped rain and debris into their faces. They clung to their rafters for five hours, the water chest high and fast moving. At times his parents, exhausted from fighting the storm, voiced their desire to let go and let the water take them. But they held on. His friend, Addison, wasn’t as lucky. Using their couch as a float Addison and her parents were swept out of their neighborhood and past the San Juanico Bridge. Her mother let go first, then her father. The inky black water swept them and thousands of others away, only revealing them again when the water was sucked back into the ocean. Bodies were found in trees, and marshes, they littered the beach, and the roads too.
Three years later and the evidence from Yolanda’s tantrum is still visible here. Skeletons of houses stand naked in the wind, stripped of their paint, lacking windows and doors, chunks of the structures gone all together. It’s also evident in the young children we work with downstairs in the daycare. They are too young to remember specifics of the storm, only that the storm that brought death and destruction brought the white people too. They were aid workers, but the children don’t remember that, only the black water and white ghosts that came right after. So when I stretch out my hand towards them they cower into their mother’s chest. But we’ve come to build the bridges that Yolanda tore down.
The house we’re living in is called the Lighthouse; a large building that survived Yolanda despite being only a stones throw from the ocean. It was on the porch of the Lighthouse a little more than a week ago that I received news a friend from home had passed away. I knew leaving the states for 9 months that something like this could happen, but at the same time, I kind of expected that it wouldn’t. That Wednesday, like every other, the kids gathered on the porch for worship, I listened from my bed while they sung “My Lighthouse” by Rend Collective. Every time they sing this song I get a little teary eyed, but that night I didn’t hold back, I cried until there were no more tears and then some. Whether they understand the lyrics or not, they’re praising a God that stands tall and shelters them in the worst of storms and lights their way when all seems lost. These kids have so much love and so much faith; Yolanda took a lot that day, but she left a generation that turned the fear she brought into courage and trust in a God who threw them a life preserver and pulled them into His arms. They inspire me to remember to praise Him in the good times and the bad, on the sunny days and in the storms too.
