It’s been a long time and A LOT has happened!
Well living in Durban is definitely not for the faint of heart. On Monday the 11th of April, out of nowhere we were hit with a severe rainstorm. It is the worst natural disaster we have ever witnessed. It was a freak weather pattern that wasn’t predicted and it just down poured for about 18 hours straight. We ended up with around 10-14 inches of rain in those18 hours alone. The toughest part was that it had been raining the whole weekend before that so the earth was already wet. The heavy rain destroyed so much around us.
For us as Hearts That Hope we escaped with not much of anything. As I stayed up worrying that our retaining walls were going to come crashing down on us, at around 12am our power went out. I went outside to take a look and saw that our road was flooded. I quickly ran to see how our other houses were. Luckily it had only just started coming into our 2 homes. I spent the next 2 hours keeping debris out of our drainage system on the road by our house while the house mom and kids cleaned up in the houses.
We had no clue about the devastation it was causing all around us during the night.
We woke up to some horrendous pictures of people’s houses covered in about 3 feet of mud, and rivers/streams taking out major bridges. It was like a war zone. I took Malakai, Piper, and their cousin out into the township on Tuesday afternoon as lots of my friends from the township were calling me to see if there was anything we could do. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing!
It is so heartbreaking to see how the poor suffer the most during times like these. From what I could see about 90% of the houses saw flooding like our 2 houses and about 50% lost all their furniture, appliances, and personal effects. But the worst was seeing how some houses had completely collapsed. I have so many Spaza shop owners and house owners and tenants phoning me for help and there really isn’t anything I can do. It breaks me.
As of today, Monday, April 25th, we still do not have running water in our house and the electricity is cut off in our area for 6-8 hours a day. The traffic is so bad as our main freeway bridge is not safe to drive on. It took me 1 1/2 hours to drive 1 1/2km to church the other day.
But as one of my board members from the USA wrote me,
“A time to be born and a time to die
A time to plant and a time to uproot
A time to tear down and a time to build
A time to weep and a time to laugh
A time to mourn and a time to dance”
– Ecclesiastes 3
Or in our case
“A time for viruses
A time riots
A time for flooding”
But God didn’t design it that way as another of my board members sent me this;
“There is a city with foundations. Where there is no flooding or death or riots”
– Hebrews 11:10 (paraphrased)
So we hold onto hope as we look forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God! Amen!
If you would like to help we could use any donation to help those that lost so much more than us. We are safe, but we would love to help our brothers and sisters who are in need during this time. The greatest needs at this time are drinkable water, non-perishable food items, and warm bedding.
Please join us as we continue to pray for those who have lost loved ones, have lost their homes, and have lost hope.