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Are We Preparing for the Latter Rain?– Part V

FRIDAY MORNING MANNA November 15, 2013
Nathaniel Fajardo Email:[email protected]

Are We Preparing for the Latter Rain?– Part V

Resilient, patient, long-suffering, hospitable, hard-working, resourceful, religious, and forgiving to a fault as a people, “pliant as a bamboo, ” as the Filipino literary art critic and poet I. V. Mallari described in his essay, the Filipinos in the Philippines are still sifting through the horror that Typhoon Haiyan, or Yolanda (as known in the Philippines), left in its devastating wake exactly a week after our Christian Roman Catholic brethren celebrated their All Saints Day, November 1, All Souls Day the next day (their solemn feast commemorating those who died and are now in Purgatory). Halloween, celebrated by most other Christians, is the eve or vigil of All Saints Day.

If the death toll of more than 10,000 in Tacloban alone, provincial capital of Leyte Island, turns out to be correct, Haiyan would be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the Philippines, packing record-breaking winds of 170 mph and causing tsunami-like storm surge to rise as high as 20 feet.