Typhoon Ruby - Part One

Typhoon Monday: I am sitting here in my “office”. Our area is in the Area Presidency Office or APO. We are in the basement, but I am looking out my window at the dark skies and gusty winds. I have never been in a typhoon. Bruce weathered a hurricane in Houston but it wasn’t too bad in our area. And now a typhoon approaches. It has been downgraded a huge amount, we are not expecting the 3 feet of water once predicted but precautions are in place. None of our area service missionaries have left their homes to join us here. For most of them it is a 2 or 3 hour ride on “public” transit. Schools and offices are closed in Manila. The ride into the office was 10 minutes as compared to 30 on a regular day. And I sit here looking out the window and wondering what this will be like.

Everyone is still remembering Yolanda and lots of preparations have been made. All the missionaries in the storm path were sent to wait out the storm in a stake center on the highest ground possible. There were supplies sent down to the areas of landfall before the storm arrived. But the greatest blessing is that the super-typhoon quickly wore away to a category 2 storm. We were blessed. But now I can add this to my category of first experiences.

We had live feed in the office conference room to monitor the path and the strength of the storm

Very gray and heavy but just rain.

Typhoon Tuesday: Everyone was praying for us all over the world. And the Lord heard and answered their prayers. The Typhoon downgraded just before landfall and then after going over the island of Samar it headed up the channel in between islands and is almost out the other side. It was the very best of a potentially very bad thing

“The wind and the waves shall obey thy will. Peace, be still, peace, be still.

  They all shall sweetly obey thy will. Peace, peace, be still.”