January 1, 2005
Dear caring and praying Ones,
We’re grateful for you and our partnership in mission.
We’re asking the Lord to show us how He might want to use
us to meet needs, and we’ve been in touch with some of the
response centers. At this point, it seems that volunteer response
has been tremendous, and the rescue and relief response has been
well organized and is working effectively. Tonight (New Year’s
eve), Leith will be flying down to Krabi and Phi Phi island to
help with funeral and burial services in the morning—please
pray for God’s anointing as he ministers.
Please pray for Orapim and many others who are still missing.
A fellow missionary friend sent a good description of the situation,
and we asked him if we might excerpt it so that you can know a
little better about what’s going on without having to wait
for our slow-written communiques. Thank God for articulate and
prolific writing friends! Anyway, the description below is from
Glen Hallead, Presbyterian mission co-worker in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
We have tried to stay in touch with folks in the south as best
as possible (with many phone lines down that communication is
further hampered, but cell phones have been an abundant blessing).
We try to stay current through the Internet, the local papers,
and most importantly word of mouth. Communication is an especially
significant issue in the areas impacted. In the south, the resorts’
employees generally handle English fairly well but this has
been a crisis of epic proportions and staff not only had to
“run for their own lives” but also needed to be
checking their own families and subsequently caring for their
own losses—meaning that translators have had a great impact
here.
Not only are communications difficult but health issues abound
as well. Raw sewage is now being pumped directly into the sea
as the already stressed treatment plants handling the largely
overbuilt tourist areas have, in many cases, been destroyed.
Fresh water reserves are being depleted at an unfathomable rate.
All this is happening down south, but on our end it has been
curiously quiet. Life goes on. Outside of checking on our volunteers
(two of whom are in the south) and helping to confirm the well-being
and whereabouts of our PC(USA) mission co-workers my (Glen’s)
involvement has been largely administrative and frustratingly
so. My email has grown from the customary 25-30 (legitimate)
emails per day to over 100. Requests have been made seeking
information on loved ones. Spine tingling confirmation has come
in for others. One such case is of young man whose father pastors
the First Presbyterian Church of Maumee, Ohio. Ben is in the
south on a Rotary-exchange year. He and his companions had planned
a camping trip to the beaches of Phuket. The sponsors decided
not to chaperone the trip and it was called off. The group would
have been in tents on the beach at the time.
In Thailand, where the Buddhist faith largely centers on individualism
and the working out of one’s “fate,” there
is not normally a strong focus on social outreach. This has
certainly impacted the way in which the crisis has been handled
and yet may be changing that socio-religious landscape for the
better. Much attention has been given to the resorts and tourist
areas, which provide a significant portion of income to Thailand.
Less attention, however, has been given to the outlying fishing
villages (which in some cases have ceased to exist). One story
in the Bangkok Post told of a single survivor from a village
not far from the resorts. He happened to be out in a fishing
boat and was washed by the tsunami into another bay where he
barely survived. He returned, as quickly as he could make his
way, to his village. He found nothing. No houses standing. No
people searching. Nothing. He says now that since no one has
come to the village to help he is starting to smell the bodies
buried in the silt, sand, and mud that used to be his village.
(It is estimated that hundreds or even thousands of bodies may
still be buried, just in Thailand). It is difficult to get information
on relief efforts as phone lines are maxed out in the south
and people are deferring to those really needing to use the
lines for emergency work and notifications.
Each day the papers carry more pictures of the devastation.
The beaches won’t be clean for a year or so and the coral
reefs 3-15 years, they say. But nothing will exceed the heartbreak
of seeing in a newspaper the picture of a 2-year-old boy who
can’t tell what village he’s from or who his parents
are. Little will erase the heartcries of the father who has
been searching for his wife and children for three days. It
will be a long time before the story of the boy found stuck
in a mangrove tree for three days will be forgotten.
Much has been made about contacts from as far away as Norway
where a man found a nephew via a picture posted on the Internet.
The rest of his family had perished. But it’s unlikely
that the fisherman from the village or his family would ever
have access to such technology. And so for us there is an injustice
that has left a sour taste. The papers are starting to carry
some of this inequity and resentment in the form of editorials.
But the Thai are polite people and normally would rather live
in quiet denial than to cause someone to “lose face.”
It was a particularly great heartache to the Thai people to
note that a grandson of their beloved King was killed in this
event. This makes the tragedy an immediate part of the royal
family’s experience and will certainly further the close
bond the King and Queen have with Thai people, who have similarly
lost loved ones. Today is an official day of mourning. It is
the day of the funeral of the King’s grandson. It is intended
to symbolize the funerals of the many who have died. Business
people are wearing black and white in recognition of this. New
Year’s celebrations have largely been cancelled in deference
to those who are mourning. And all the while the clean up effort
continues.
Holding on to the Rock,
Leith and Carol Fujii
The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
121
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