Thursday, November 4, 2010

Hurricane Tomas

It's 3:00 a.m., Saturday morning, and I slowly open my eyes. In the stillness of our bedroom, I can still hear the rain outside. It's been raining steadily since 2:00 p.m. yesterday afternoon. Jason stirs beside me and then gets up. Too exhausted I hardly have the energy to move but he returns a few moments later with his computer. "Look at the eye of the hurricane here." he shows me a satellite image which shows Hurricane Tomas is just coming over the south western tip of Haiti, where Jeremie is.
I sigh. Poor Denise. Last week Friday she left for Jeremie with a sack full of items she purchased for her family and the money she had earned making necklaces, to give them. On Tuesday she called to say she was leaving and was waiting at the tap/tap rendezvous. On Thursday she was still waiting. Since MAF was doing a flight to Jeremie Thursday afternoon Jason called her to say to get a short ride to the airport instead and they could pick her up. This way she would be back in Port au Prince in under an hour. She told him she would think about it, but had already paid her fare, 500 Goudes, ($12.50 USD) for her trip in the tap tap. "I will try to get my money back," she said. Hours later she called to say that the driver was unwilling to refund the money so she opted for an 18 hour Tap Tap ride, instead of a 50 minute, free airplane ride. I honestly don't know what she was thinking. Hours later she called again to say the roads had become impassable and the tap tap had turned around, could she still catch the airplane? No, It was to late. The airplane had already come and gone. "But now I don't have any money left and I haven't eaten all day," she told Jason. "Plus my family lives on the other side of the mountains so I can't walk back there again."
Which means she is now stuck in the middle of nowhere in the eye of a hurricane. Seeing the satellite images, I get on my knees and beg God to keep her safe, to provide a shelter somewhere for her, for kind strangers to take her in, and for her safe return to her family here. All the uncertainty and stress of not knowing what's going to happen in the next hours as Hurricane Tomas comes closer to Port au Prince begins to take it's toll. As I begin to doze off the words of Psalm 32 that we had read earlier come back to me and comfort me. "For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come nigh unto him. 7 Thou are my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble, thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance."

1 comment:

  1. Hey Will... I was just looking at those satelite images too when I all the sudden realized you said Denise was in Jeremie last week, right where the hurricane is. That's why I asked. I will be praying for her safety! The Lord can keep her safe though everything she must be going through. His Word is always full of great encouragements...
    Take care... Love, Mary

    ReplyDelete