The following article was taken from the Deseret News November 16, 2013
Documented by Deseret News journalist Jesse Hyde and photojournalist Revell Call
“It was such a terrible thing we witnessed, but I learned so
much about how people will come together to help others, expecting nothing in
return. I saw that from other missionaries, and I saw that from the Philippine
people. It's a lesson I hope I never forget.”
Amanda Smith, LDS missionary
In the darkness of early morning, Amanda Smith moved away
from the window to shield her face from the slashing rain. She had shut it just
moments before to ward off the raging storm whipping through the palm trees outside.
But now the wind had ripped it open, and the wooden shutters
were slamming violently against the wall again and again. Sister Smith, an LDS
missionary from Elk Ridge, Utah, couldn’t see anything outside, but she could
smell the sea, which seemed to be getting closer and closer. They had to get
out of here.
She had heard about the storm three days before, from a
driver of a pedicab. It was typhoon season, and tropical storms were common in
the Philippines. Still, the last storm warning had produced nothing but blue
skies. Some of the missionaries wondered if this time would be any different.
There were nine missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints with her in the house, a two-story structure made of
cement blocks. They were young women from Utah and Alaska and the Philippines,
all about her own age, 19. They had done what they could to prepare, hastily
assembling 72-hour kits, and had even bought candles and rope, just like their
mission president had asked, even though no one in the house thought either
would be necessary.
Now, as water roared down the streets toward them, Sister
Smith realized no preparations were too small. The worst storm in generations
had just hit landfall.
More than 300 miles to the north, in an apartment in the
capital of Manila, Elder Ian S. Ardern sat watching CNN. A former mission
president with salt and pepper hair and an easy smile, he couldn’t help but
feel a looming sense of dread about what was unfolding. On the screen, the typhoon
churned, a monster on a path no one could stop. Winds would eventually reach
200 miles per hour.
As first counselor in the Philippine Area Presidency, Elder
Ardern worried directly about the 675,000 LDS Church members living in the
Philippines, particularly the thousands living in the eye of the storm in and
around a city of 235,000 called Tacloban, as well as the entire population.
A native of New Zealand, he had seen his fair share of
typhoons, and knew firsthand their destructive power. He hoped the members, and
the young missionaries, had heeded the call to prepare.
Days before the storm hit, his office had been sending out
warnings to the 21 mission presidents in the Philippines, with maps regularly
updating and charting the course of the typhoon. Prepare emergency kits, they
had advised. And get to a safe place, which for many members meant a chapel.
The area presidency had asked each of the mission presidents
to call in when the storm subsided to report damages and the status of their
missionaries. Elder Ardern watched the news as the sun began to rise over the
Philippines and waited for the first phone call to come in. He braced for the
worst.
Sister Smith had always wanted to be a missionary, ever
since she was a little girl growing up in Minnesota, toting her scriptures to
Primary, learning to play hymns like “I am a Child of God” on the piano. She’d
put in her mission papers as soon as she turned 19.
Surviving the typhoon: Fear, faith and miracles for 10 LDS
sister missionaries trapped in the Philippines
For 10 LDS sister missionaries trapped in the rising waters
of Typhoon Haiyan, fear gave way to faith in a dramatic story of survival
“It was such a
terrible thing we witnessed, but I learned so much about how people will come together
to help others, expecting nothing in return. I saw that from other
missionaries, and I saw that from the Philippine people. It's a lesson I hope I
never forget.”
She had been excited to go to the Philippines. But in some
ways, she seemed too delicate for this place, with her long, willowy build and
fine porcelain skin. The Philippines wasn’t exactly clean, and some things had
taken getting used to — rice for every meal, the choking smell of exhaust on
the clogged streets, cold showers from a bucket. But she had also fallen in
love with the place — the sweet smell of mangos, the effervescence of the
people, the way the language of Waray-Waray had started to roll off the tongue.
One day she sat down on a stool to teach a lesson in a
dirt-floor shack and out of nowhere three fuzzy chicks materialized and walked
around her legs, the way birds landed on Cinderella’s shoulder, and she
thought: What is this magical place?
She had been out five months, her latest area called San
Jose, where some of Tacloban’s richest and poorest residents live, some in nice
apartments, others in shacks of bamboo and cardboard, a tarp stained by the
smoke of cooking fires the only thing passing for a roof, roosters and stray
dogs running at their feet.
San Jose sits right on the sea, and so a few days before the
storm, just to be safe, the mission president’s assistants (two young men,
elders who help the president) asked her and her companion to come farther
inland, which is where she was now, with nine other sister missionaries, in a
house quickly filling with a black, mucky water.
As the storm worsened, she could feel the house shaking,
metal poles outside snapping, animals howling and squealing.
At first, the sisters had all gathered in one central room
on the second floor, thinking it the safest place in the house. But the water
was now rising to their knees. Metal bars covered every window, preventing an
escape outside. With no other choice they would have to go to the first floor,
where the water nearly reached the ceiling, and try to open the front door to
get out.
They knew the current could pull them out into the ocean,
but if they stayed where they were now, they would drown in what had
essentially become a box of cement walls.
One by one the sisters slipped into the freezing water on
the first floor. A few couldn’t swim; they held tight to their companions. Some
of the women started to cry.
Sister Smith was scared too, but she was determined not to
let it show. She wanted to stay calm for the others.
The front door was locked with a metal latch on the bottom
and the top. One of the sisters dived under the water and unlocked the bottom
latch; another reached the top and did the same. But when they tried to open
the door it wouldn’t budge. The water pressing from the outside and inside had
sealed it shut.
What had been ebbing as a low level panic reached hysteria
for some of the sisters, who began weeping and sobbing. Sister Smith could feel
the panic rising in her chest too, but she had to stay calm. With a few of the
other sisters who had become leaders of the group, she started to sing hymns,
their voices muted by the stinky water rising to their chins. They quoted
scripture. They prayed. Sister Smith put on a brave face, not daring to say
aloud what she was thinking:
“I never thought this is where my life would end.”
As the storm subsided, the phone in Elder Ardern’s office
started to ring. One by one, the presidents of the 21 missions in the
Philippines called in, reporting that all their missionaries were safe and
accounted for. Except for one. The president from the Tacloban mission never
called.
As Elder Ardern waited, the phone rang. Parents from Idaho
and Texas called in, frantic for news of their children. The wives of the area
presidency took most of the calls, assuring parents that as soon as they had
word they’d let them know the status of their missionary children.
More than 24 hours passed and the area presidency still
hadn’t heard any word on the status of the 204 Tacloban missionaries. Elder
Ardern was pacing when an email finally came in from the mission president. The
38 missionaries in the city of Tacloban were safe. He had negotiated with local
government officials to send an email on the only functioning Internet portal
in town. As soon as he found the rest of his missionaries he’d be in touch, he
promised.
For 10 LDS sister missionaries trapped in the rising waters
of Typhoon Haiyan, fear gave way to faith in a dramatic story of survival
“It was such a
terrible thing we witnessed, but I learned so much about how people will come
together to help others, expecting nothing in return. I saw that from other
missionaries, and I saw that from the Philippine people. It's a lesson I hope I
never forget.”
Cell service was still impossible, and would be for days, if
not weeks. Elder Ardern was relieved, but also worried about the rest of the
mission.
The area presidency dispatched every church employee in Cebu
and Manila — security and building maintenance and church welfare and others —
to go to Tacloban to search for members. They would travel the six hours from Cebu
to Tacloban to count survivors, return to Cebu to find a working phone or
Internet connection to make a report to church headquarters in Manila, and then
head back out in to the wreckage to find more survivors and help.
In one Mormon congregation alone, 95 percent of the members
saw their homes destroyed. Scores had lost family members, many carried out to
sea with the current, never to return.
The sister missionaries worked together. Sister Schaap
punched a hole through an opening in a flimsy wall, and the group of 10 swam
through the murky water that would soon carry their journals and clothes and
pots and pans out to sea. Those who couldn’t swim clung tightly to their
companions.
The sisters used the rope to reach a nearby roof. Sister
Smith stood on the rain gutter, the other nine sister missionaries shivering
beside her, the rain still coming down in sheets. Hours had passed since the
beginning of the storm, and yet the sky above Tacloban was still gray, shrouded
by fog.
Sister Smith said thoughts of dying left her mind. But some
of the sisters appeared pale and their bodies were shaking. The water was still
rising and they feared it would engulf them.
One of the sisters suggested they pray. They huddled closely
together, bowed their heads, and with the rain dripping down their chins, asked
God to make the water stop. And then, in what Sister Smith could only describe
as the greatest miracle of her life, the sea stopped rising.
By the time Elder Ardern arrived in Tacloban four days after
the storm, the water had receded, leaving a putrid scene of destruction in its
wake. Bloated bodies lay exposed on the sides of the road, some covered by a
blanket, or rusty corrugated roofing, others by a moldy piece of cardboard. The
stench was sickening.
At one point, the city had tried to conduct a mass burial
for 200, but had turned its trucks around when they heard gunfire.
The city had descended into chaos and lawlessness. Survivors
of the typhoon had broken into stores that hadn’t been flattened to steal
televisions and toys, food, even light fixtures, despite the fact that there
was no electricity.
Hours after the storm, the president’s two assistants had
made the walk from the mission home to the house where the sisters had been
staying. The house was destroyed but they had to kick through the door to get
inside. When they found no one, they feared the worse, a sense that only
heightened when a neighbor told them they’d seen four sisters leaving for a
nearby elementary school.
“There were supposed to be 10,” one of the elders said.
They found all 10 at a nearby elementary school, and soon
learned the story of the escape from the house and the hours spent on the roof,
praying for someone to find them.
With the sisters now accounted for, the assistants and other
missionaries assigned to the mission office fanned out through the city, trying
to find the rest of their mission force. A dense cloud cover prevented even
satellite phones from working, meaning the missionaries had no way to
communicate with missionaries serving in outlying areas.
But these missionaries, they said guided by the spirit and
survival instincts, made their way to the mission home. Some walked for four
hours. Others hitched a ride on a motorcycle, relying on the kindness of
strangers unsure how to feed their own children. One group of missionaries
cobbled together more than a thousand dollars and made their way to Tacloban by
boat. All 204 missionaries were now accounted for.
The two assistants to the president, one from Dallas and the
other from Fiji, stayed with the 10 sisters and others at the mission home,
supporting each other, especially at night when gunshots rang out.
With their own food running low, the assistants, under the
direction of their mission president, decided they had to make their way to the
airport. So before dawn, four days after the storm but again in pouring rain,
they headed out with their flashlights pointing the way through the darkness.
“It was the hardest thing,” said one of the assistants.
“People had gotten so hungry they had begun to attack each other. The worst
part was the smell, the stench of death.”
Some sisters, their feet blistered, could barely walk. The
looting had become more severe, and the missionaries had heard rumors that
prisoners at the jail, which had lost its electricity and its guards, had
simply walked out. The assistants stood at the front and back of the long line
of missionaries — dozens and dozens — as they made the long march to the
airport.
As they walked, Elder Ardern tried to arrange a flight out.
He had booked flights in Manila, but thousands of other survivors had mobbed
the Tacloban airport. The ticket agent told him if he wanted a flight out, he’d
have to pay more to get his 204 missionaries to safety.
As Elder Ardern tried other options, the missionaries milled
about what was left of the airport terminal, its walls blasted out by the gale
force winds of the storm. And then, a
final miracle.
An Army sergeant with a C-130 airplane, assigned by the U.S.
government to fly Americans out of the disaster area, said he had a feeling he
should walk through the terminal one more time. As he did, he saw out of the
corner of his eye what looked like the nametag of a Mormon missionary. The
sergeant, a Mormon himself, asked if the missionary was American. When he said
he was, the sergeant told him he could arrange flights out for all the
Americans and foreigners in his C-130.
Before the day had ended, many of the missionaries Elder
Ardern had come for were flying out of Tecloban. By week’s end, all of the
missionaries in the area would be evacuated to Manila, where they would await a
new assignment in other missions in the Philippines.
It’s a Saturday afternoon in Manila, a week after the storm,
the air hot and sticky. Sister Amanda Smith and the nine other survivors are
sitting on a bench on the well-manicured grounds of the Philippine Missionary
Training Center, talking to a television crew from New York. Their story of
survival and resistance will inspire millions, they are told.
Still, it is hard for most of them to talk about their
experience, and the things they saw. They said night terrors awake them. And
so, just as they did during the storm, they sing hymns and say quiet prayers, hoping
for peace, and an ability to leave behind the terror of what they witnessed.
And yet, there is a part of them that wishes they could go
back, to help those members and non-members alike, who are still stuck. They
are comforted to know that the church has never stopped searching for those
that are lost, and that in the coming weeks church officials, from Salt Lake
and throughout the Philippines, will continue to push food and medical
supplies, blankets and tents, into the areas most affected by the typhoon, to
provide relief to Filipinos, whether they are Mormons or not, part of a rescue
operation that includes dozens of non-governmental organizations (NGO's), faith
groups and governments from around the world.
When the interview with the TV crew is over, Sister Smith
and the other sisters hurry to a parking lot, where the missionaries evacuated
from Tacloban are boarding vans that will take them to their new area. They hug
and cry, bonded by a tragedy they never saw coming, but one they were surprisingly
prepared for.
“It was such a terrible thing we witnessed,” Sister Smith
said. “But I learned so much about how people will come together to help
others, expecting nothing in return. I saw that from other missionaries, and I
saw that from the Philippine people. It’s a lesson I hope I never forget.”
