Every day, we learn more about the devastation that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda left on our family and friends across the Philippines. The magnitude of this typhoon is one that we have never experienced. Our current estimates are that over 6,000 of our community partners ("community partners" is the name CCT uses for the people they reach out to and serve) in the Visayas and Luzon regions were seriously impacted by the typhoon. In Capiz and Ilo-ilo, provinces in the Visayas region, our staff are reporting that 99% of CCT's community partners lost their homes and businesses.

Many of our staff also lost homes or suffered tremendous property damage, but by Monday, on their own initiative they were coming together at the CCT office to pray and assess how to help the many community partners they serve. They assembled care packages filled with basic essentials and delivered them to our community partners there (in the photo below, staff from a CCT branch office in Visayas are packaging relief goods for the community partners).

Staff who suffered so much physical damage themselves shared, "our partners are depending on us. By God's grace we need to help them." And so they went, and our community partners were blessed and inspired by their presence. As staff and community partners shared with each other, they cried and laughed together. One community partner told the CCT staff that during the typhoon, she recalled the story about David and Goliath that her fellowship group (microfinance small group) learned recently. As they sat praying, huddled in the corner of their home, she pictured Goliath as the strong typhoon winds and powerful rains, and her and her family as David. Despite losing her home, she celebrated after the storm because she and her family made it through the storm safely. She said "we are victors!"

Homes and personal belongings lost, but victorious over the storm!