After I shared the last update about the flooding, there was an outpouring of love — messages asking,“Is there damage?” and “Do you need support?”

Those questions always make me pause. I never want to turn a tragedy — especially one our neighbors and staff are also walking through — into an immediate ask. I need time to look around first. To understand what’s actually needed. To hold it in prayer.

Now that we’ve had time to assess, some repairs can’t wait. So we’re stepping forward, holding onto the belief that God will make a way, because that’s simply what we’re left with.

To see previous Flood Post, click here. 

Still Processing

Lately, it feels like we patch one hole, and then it rains again and another one opens up — a weary game of whack-a-mole. And yet, when I look beyond our campus, I find myself grateful.

We sit at the base of one of the largest mountains, surrounded by security walls — when the drainage clogs, the water has nowhere to go but in. Most people in our community don’t have walls that trap water around them.

This past week, we visited the mountains where tarps had been handed out and heard from the fishing villages that a few huts still need repair — but the weight of this storm largely settled on our campus.

Gratitude can sit heavy in the chest. It can be complicated.

We so often pray storms won’t come our way, without pausing to consider that means they’ll land somewhere else. That’s a prayer I’m learning to sit with differently.

It’s a phrase we repeat often as Christians, and yet there are moments when I find myself wrestling with it.

But does it really ring the same when the news isn’t good? When everything feels like it’s falling apart, when someone dies, or when nothing around you feels good anymore?

The people here still say it —
when their homes shift,
when help is far away,
when food runs out and there’s no backup plan.
They say it with every reason to doubt and every reason to question.

Because if we only say God is good when life lines up the way we want, then maybe we’ve made “good” far too shallow.

Here — where not much feels good right now — I still believe it. I hear it spoken by people who have every reason not to.

Not because life is good.
But because God still is.

So when I look honestly at the realities the people around us already carry, I can say this with clarity: I’m grateful the storm found us and spared them.

How I’m Asking for Help

I want to be honest about where I’m carrying this. I hold the daily weight of decisions that affect the quality of life for the people I serve alongside — families who chose to come with us 15 years ago, raised children with mine , and weather storms without the safety nets most of us rely on.

I don’t yet know what it will cost to do everything right. I don’t know if we’ll be able to fully replace the 15-year-old roofs on staff homes — or if, for now, the best we can do is patch them well enough to turn a steady leak into a drip.

What I do know is that the answer won’t come from clearer math or more time — it will come through whoever God whispers to, whoever He sits with, and whatever is given in response.

And in the meantime..