UPDATE FROM THE RALSTONS: Heartbreak into Joy It was a meeting I didn’t want to make. In fact, I was dreading it. I had to tell a whole community that the relief goods that I had promised them were not coming. Five days earlier I had arrived in Ormoc City with a team of 7 from a church in Oregon in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, the strongest typhoon ever recorded in history to hit landfall. Our original plan of doing a week-long Church Partnership Evangelism campaign in the small community where Pastor Apollo & Tina Ybanez were starting a new church quickly became a desire to do relief efforts. A few days earlier we had received a text message from them stating succinctly, “No church, no house, no food, no clothes. Barangay (small community) decimated.” On our first day in Ormoc, I got a ride on a motorcycle with a member of their church to their barangay of 300-350 families one hour outside of the city to assess the damage and how we could help. What I saw was total devastation. It looked like a scene from a war movie where bombs had been dropped and totally wiped out a community. 80% of the homes and buildings had been flattened. Hectares and hectares of coconut and banana trees felled. Rice crops ruined. Telephone poles strewn across the highway like matchsticks. I promised them on that day that we would return later in the week with relief goods. I did not realize at the time how difficult that would be. I then got on the phone with my wife, Chris, back in Cebu and said, “Prepare a bunch of relief goods for Calunangan, Merida. They need it badly and they need it immediately.” Pastor Apollo was someone we had worked with for almost our whole 24 years in the Philippines as missionaries. We remembered him as a 19-year-old with no training but a lot of desire to be used by God, being part of a church planting team in Ormoc City, losing one of their teammates when he was electrocuted. We were sponsors in their wedding, and later became godparents to their children, and were discouraged when their eldest daughter developed asthma that always seemed to wipe out their meager salary. We watched as they struggled, and eventually failed, in their first church plant. We helped and encouraged as they sought to plant the church in Calunangan, sending teams a couple of times to help them with the evangelism. We gave them a loan to start a pig business so that they could be partially self-supporting, only to see an infection hit the sow and they lost everything. We were able to give them a second loan to try to get started again (ironically, the only thing that seemed to survive the fury of Typhoon Yolanda was the sow and the 10 piglets). The family had lived in the house for only 6 months that Pastor Apollo built little by little over a two year period, and in less than an hour it was wiped out, along with a small “sari-sari” store (small store that sells basic household commodities) that was attached to their house, that was due to open in a couple of weeks. As I got down from the bus near what used to be their house, dreading the news I had to give them, I was hit with the screaming delight of their two daughters, Princess & Hannah, who saw me first, yelling, “Pastor Brent! Pastor Brent!” They were having their simple lunch of rice and a small piece of fish, sitting under a makeshift lean-to. The bed also served as their dining room table. The girls managed to keep a constant chatter going with me the whole time I was there, telling me all about the big typhoon that flattened their church and home, much to the consternation of their dad who was also trying to converse with me. Somehow the girl’s delight in seeing me helped to soften the blow of the bad news I had to deliver. With tears flowing freely, I explained to Pastor Apollo & Tina that no relief goods were coming. Chris had worked so hard overseeing an army of very willing volunteers from our church in Cebu, and everything was ready to be shipped, but we couldn’t find a way to transport the goods from Cebu to the island of Leyte. We had researched every angle, worked our connections, checked out every port where ships ran from Cebu to Leyte, and everything was fully booked and they were not issuing advance tickets because everyone else was also trying to ship relief goods from Cebu. I told them that we would try again the following week but I could make no promises. One by one, families from their church and other community families dropped by to receive the same sad news, “No relief goods were coming!” And in typical Filipino fashion, even in their extreme disappointment, they were very gracious in their response. Imagine my overflowing joy four days later when I rolled into Calunangan as part of a three-vehicle caravan, complete with 8 “body guards” (some of whom were body builders and martial arts experts) and started unloading the relief goods. God had opened up a way for us to get passage on a Ferry, and we were able to bring much more than we had originally anticipated: sacks of rice, canned goods, noodles, dried fish, candles, hygiene kits, tools, and enough galvanized iron sheets to build a new roof for both the church and the pastor’s home. Word quickly spread throughout the community, “The relief goods have arrived.” People started streaming to the church, some by motorcycle but most by walking or running. Over 150 people were provided for in a small way on that day through the help of many, many people. As each family name was called out to receive their relief goods, I stood off on the sidelines, once again with tears streaming down my face, grateful to God for providing a way. As each family came by to say “Thank You” expressing their gratitude as they left with their sack of goods, it made all the hard work, the effort, the heartbreak, so worthwhile.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 20:45:39 +0000
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