By Vicki Penwell | Executive Director
Today the rebar cornerpost are in. The wood frames are going up. There is LIFE and HOPE in the rebuilding!
Today a mother stopped by the construction site with her baby who had been delivered last year in Nerissa's birth center, before it was demolished by the wind and waves of the world's largest storm in November. This mother dreams of a time when the community will once again have a safe, clean, bright and pretty clinic for pregnant women to come to.
Last November, Mercy In Action mounted an incredible Disaster Response. We loaded our ambulance in Olongapo with supplies and tents and drove (and ferried) to the island where unbelievable catastrophe has struck with Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda. It was terrifying and brave and dramatic as we rushed into the ravaged countryside to bring maternity and medical care for the survivors. Thousands of patients were treated and hundreds of babies born in our make-shift tents at ground zero.
But now the time as has come to rebuild... to get the local people who survived the typhoon back on their feet.
One midwife we met in the disaster zone, Nerissa Cumpio, especially touched our hearts. She never asked for help; she just showed us her smashed birth center, and showed us pictures of what it had been before the disaster. She came to work in our tents to give her loving care to the battered survivors in the early aftermath of that terrible storm. She healed her own wounds of loss and grief as she cared for pregnant women who were hurting. Nerissa wrote me a text recently: "Thank you for the support and encouragement this is really a big help to us and to our community. I am overwhelmed. I am crying".
Mercy In Action has chosen to complete our disaster response by rebuild Nerissa's birth center. To make a lasting impact on the entire community as they recover from this immense tragedy. Lets do it together, for the survivors, for the future, for the next generation yet to be born.
Can you help? How can we work together to attract wider support for re-building this one birth center in the disaster zone? Would you be willing to tell your friends?
Thank you for your loving concern.
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