On Wednesday May 24, around noon local time, Typhoon Mawar hit Guam and gradually increased in strength uprooting trees and destroying dwellings that were not designed to withstand high winds! Electric power was cut. By 10 PM the force of the wind was at its peak. It continued throughout the night and finally subsided mid Thursday.

The Pacific island of Guam USA has been my home for the past 5 years. My wife and I were mostly in our bedroom during the typhoon with the storm shutter of our window closed. This meant after electric power was cut by the typhoon, it was dark in our room throughout the day. We thankfully had battery powered LED lights, and were not in total darkness.

I’m writing this article to notify my friends and visitors that I’ve been handicapped for 3 days without Internet and I’m still without power. Mobile data for our phones was finally restored on Saturday morning. We are now in survival mode without power for our refrigerator, freezer, washing machine and electric lights. Thankfully we have propane gas to cook by. My brother in law with whom we are living with now set up a way to charge our phones from a car battery. That’s why I’m able to write this post. Normally I use my PC to write posts but I can’t use it now without electricity.

Thankfully today we found a water station where we brought 30 gallons of drinking water! Tap water is down to a trickle. We save it in buckets for washing clothes and bathing. Traffic lights are not working. Drivers at intersections are courteous to each other and yield to other cars when necessary. The landscape has changed with broken and uprooted trees. Gasoline stations have long lines with some people waiting up to 8 hours to fill their vehicles! On Thursday we had to wait 40 minutes in a long line at a local store to buy food.

A friend knew his rented house would not stand the winds and took his family to a hotel before the typhoon hit. It’s good he did because the typhoon destroyed his house. He and or his family could have been killed or seriously injured had they stayed. As far as I know, nobody on the island has died due to the typhoon.

The house Tess and I are now staying at has 8 inch concrete walls and was built to withstand wind gusts up to 350 miles per hour. We knew we would be safe. Most houses on Guam are typhoon proof. And none of the utility poles were knocked down, only the power and communication lines were.

This is the second typhoon we experienced on Guam, and by far the worst, not only for me, but for many others living in the tropics. My brother in law says there was a worse one in the 1990s when no tree was left standing!

If you know Jesus, please pray the Lord will heal this island and fix the broken power grid soon! From Monday May 29 and up to June 4th we have important business in town with legal authorities to accomplish. But we don’t want to drive there without knowing we can get gasoline for the car without waiting too long for it.

I am claiming Romans 8:28 that the Lord will work this disaster for good for us and all His children on the island of Guam! And may those who don’t know Him come to repentance and the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ as a result.

Uprooted tree

Uprooted palm trees

Uprooted trees

Charging our phones from a car battery.

Storing water

Storing water

Tuesday May 30 Update

Last night when I went to bed, I had two burdens on my heart, things I needed to do today but were made difficult to do because of the destruction of the typhoon. I claimed the promises of God that He would supply needed gasoline for the car, and He did today after a 3 hour wait! Most gasoline stations are closed, and the ones open have long lines. I saw one line at least two miles long! The one I waited at today was about half a mile long.

Public transportation on Guam is very poor. There are no trains and bus lines are few and don’t go to where we regularly need to go. The existing bus lines don’t have schedules posted by the bus stop. People are handicapped without a vehicle. I didn’t drive or own a vehicle the 40 years I lived in Japan because public transportation was so good. And of course if you’ve read some of my early posts on this website, you know I loved to hitchhike. I never expected to drive ever again but living in Guam made it necessary.

And the second burden was also resolved, praise the Lord! I had to retrieve an important document from a government agency last Wednesday but couldn’t because of the typhoon. Today I got it back.

I feel sorry for the poor tourists who came to Guam to enjoy the tropics and have ended up in a survival situation.

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