CARDINAL TAGLE: BE THE FACE OF GOD, BE ONE WITH THE
VICTIMS / FILIPINOS ABROAD SEEK NEWS, RALLY AID AFTER YOLANDA
 

http://news4.bahraini.me/wp-content/images/cache/0/33/29/4a189_09tagle.jpg
Cardinal Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle
INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, NOVEMBER 18, 2013 (INQUIRER) By Nestor Corrales
– Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle was teary-eyed on Saturday when he said
Be the face of God and be the hope of others. It was a prayer service
and Holy hour at the San Fernando de Dilao Parish Church in Paco,
Manila.

Tagle said people are now suffering, grieving, and confused, and even
questioning the plans of God because of the calamities that devastated
our country.

He urged everyone to pray and hope. The Cardinal also appealed to the
people especially those who were spared from the supertyphoon Yolanda
(international name: Haiyan) to be the face of God and be one with the
victims in this trying times.

If others, cannot see the face of God, be the face of God. If others
cannot hear the voice of God, be the voice of God. And if others cannot
feel the saving power of God, be their arms and help them to stand
again, Tagle said in tears.

November 16 has been declared by the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines (CBCP) as a Day of lament and hope: Solidarity in prayer (Panaghoy
at Pag-asa: Damayan sa panalangin).

According to Tagle, a day of prayer is an expression of solidarity with
fellow Filipinos who were severely battered by monster typhoon Yolanda
and of the successive calamities that afflicted the country.

Filipinos abroad seek news, rally aid after
Yolanda Associated Press 4:49 pm | Saturday, November 16th,
2013

Local shipping companies for Filipinos regularly pick up hefty care
packages, or ‘balikbayan boxes,’ to deliver to family members abroad.
Several Chicago-area companies are now using the system for typhoon
relief efforts.

HONG KONGThey gather in California churches, in Hong Kong
shopping malls, at prayer vigils in Bahrain and on hastily launched
Facebook pages. Filipino overseas workers, cut off from home after a
super-typhoon killed thousands, are coming together to pray, swap
information and launch aid drives.

Above all, many of the more than 10.5 million Filipinos abroad some 10
percent of the countrys population are desperately dialing phone
numbers that dont answer in the typhoon zone, where aid is still only
slowly trickling in and communications have been largely blown away.

I call again, and I keep trying and trying and trying but no one
answered, said Princess Howard, a worker at a money transfer business
in Hong Kong, of her attempts to reach her 62-year-old grandfather and
nine other relatives in the Leyte region that was flattened when
Supertyphoon Yolanda (Haiyan) hit one week ago.

Sending $21.4 billion back home last year alone, Filipino overseas
workers are a major part of their countrys economy, with their
remittances equaling nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product. Spread
out over more than 200 countries, they work as nurses in Europe, sugar
cane laborers in Malaysia, housemaids in Hong Kong and construction
workers in the oil-rich Middle East.

Hong Kong alone has some 133,000 Filipinos, mostly domestic workers who
tend to gather in local parks on Sundays, a day off. There are so many
Filipinos in Hong Kong, that an entire shopping mall catering to them
has developed to buy goods from home and, crucially, wire money back
to families. Howard, 18, works in a remittance agency at the mall and
says that days after the storm, her family is still ringing missing
relatives mobile phones 10 to 20 times a day with no luck. Sometimes I
lose hope. And sometimes I just carry on doing it.

For Filipinos abroad, the price of earning a living for family back home
has always been separation, and for many, that has never been felt so
keenly over the past week as they watched helplessly from afar as the
typhoon ripped apart entire communities.

If only I had magic, in one click I would be there, said 30-year-old
Jeff Ilagan, an assistant pastor at the Filipino Disciples Christian
Church in Los Angeles, California, who is from Leyte and whose wife and
three young children are still in their village. As the storm hit, he
endured a sleepless night worrying after receiving a text message from
his wife saying, Pray for us.

Ilagans family survived and he is desperate to see them but he cant
leave the U.S. for a full year or he will invalidate his religious
worker visa. Instead, the young pastor is throwing himself into
fundraising efforts at his adopted U.S. church, organizing special
offerings and weekly rummage sales for typhoon relief.

What I can do here to help them is to pray for them and participate in
any efforts to help, he said.

In Kuwait City, 27-year old pharmacist Dindin Ponferrada has tried
dozens of time to reach her family in Barugo, about 20 kilometers west
of the worst-hit city of Tacloban, but all lines are cut.

Every time I check Facebook, I see people posting pictures of the
devastation and asking for help and aid, she said.

In a display of unity in Bahrain, local Shiite Muslims joined the
Filipino workers community in a candlelight vigil Tuesday. A
48-year-old domestic worker, Maria Lisa Bartolome, one of about 50,000
Filipino workers in the Gulf state, said she joined another vigil at the
main Catholic church in the capital Manama. Bartolomes family lives in
Manila and rode out the typhoon, but she has not heard from relatives in
Cebu.

We are praying not to have another typhoon, she said.

The Philippines has long been known as a nation that exports its people,
starting with the political strife that began in the 1970s under
dictator Ferdinand Marcos and continuing through the decades as the
countrys economy faltered even as other Southeast Asian nations
prospered.

The country in recent years has made an impressive economic comeback,
but overseas workers still remain one of the pillars of the economy.

Over the decades, the trend has created a far-flung and yet close-knit
diaspora.

All Filipinos working abroad share the desire to sacrifice to do
something to help their families back home. So Filipinos also tend to
help each other wherever they find each other, because they all share
this spirit, says Ted Laguatan, a Philippines-born lawyer in San
Francisco who specializes in immigration cases and has written essays on
the Filipino diaspora.

That unity and its resulting network of churches and community groups
has swung into action across the world in the past week.

Philippine-born Letty Desacola, who has called Australia home since
1979, was devastated when she heard that nine members of her extended
family were dead.

The 61-year-old retired hospital employee who lives in the east coast
city of Brisbane decided to focus on raising donations for survivors
through a Facebook page she created.

I thought Im not going to sit feeling sorry and grieving because its
not going to help. So what I did, I called a friend of mine in the
shipping business and asked for help, she said.

She was given a shipping container free of charge to fill with donated
emergency supplies. A Brisbane storage company has donated a collection
place. One local business has so far donated a ton of linen. Tents,
clothes and tinned food are rolling in.

Its very, very overwhelming, the response, Desacola said.

Overwhelming but not surprising, said Laguatan.

Filipinos have an incredible resilience, an incredible ability to
survive anywhere in the world, he said. We are used to hardship, from
oppression to natural disasters, and we understand suffering.