Family,
I apologize for taking so much time to write you all. As you can all imagine & as you have all heard, the damage here in the Philippines is incredible. My last few days have been filled with helping people with their homes, land, etc. We are extremely fortunate here in the Cebu mission because we were not directly hit or hit as hard as other areas. The concern is centered around the Tacloban where there have been recorded around 10,000 deaths. Also, there are 80 missionaries unaccounted for. My guess, hopefully I am correct, is that they are okay but they just have no way to communicate to the mission president or a way to reach temple grounds. However, I am especially worried because about half of my district in the MTC & more than half of my zone in the MTC reported to that mission. All we can do is pray & hope that they are doing alright. I would try to e-mail some of them & see how they are doing, but it would be pointless right now with no communication & I'm sure they are already flooded with e-mails to read from friends & family back home, so I will just wait until there is more information.
I'm sure you are all wondering where I was & what I was doing during the storm. Of course, we had a knowledge of the storm a day or two before it actually hit so we were prepared. Well, I guess as prepared as you can be for something like this. I will tell you everything according to my time in which I am 14 hours ahead of you.
I had no idea that a storm was heading our way until around
Thursday afternoon. We received a text telling us to return to our apartments by
5:00 pm that evening. They also told us to go to the store & prepare a 72 hour kit. After we did that, we return & just waited. We were told not to leave our apartment at all the next day. All we could do then is just wait. . . It was strange to see what started off as a cloudy day turn into a typhoon. I actually hesitate to call it a typhoon because like I said, we were not hit nearly as hard here. During the day of the typhoon, I took a few naps & read a lot. It was not exciting whatsoever. I'm afraid that some of you are expecting some crazy story, but I'm sorry to say that I don't have one. We were permitted to return to work
on Saturday, but our work was to go around helping those people in need. All day
Saturday we were going around helping people with whatever, as I stated earlier.
Sunday, we went to church & went around helping some more. Today, things are pretty much back to normal. We are going around working, teaching lessons, & of course we are still looking for opportunities to serve people. We have a few service projects planned for later this week & next week, but nothing too extensive.
I hope this e-mail helps put your mind's at ease. I am grateful for all of your prayers & concern. But now, you should turn your prayers & thoughts to those in Tacloban. That is where the real damage is. I wish there was a way for me to go over there & help them, but all I can do is pray. I will still e-mail you all
on Wednesday. Hopefully we will have a little more information. Thanks again. I love you.
-Elder Staheli
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