The village head's voice came on and it sounded a little glittery. He announced that the heavy rainfall has brought water levels in the rivers to its critical point, the reservoirs that were meant to double up as dams were past its critical point and they could not hold the water for much longer.
The government can only hold the waters for at most another 2-3 hours, and after that residents along the river should brace for a massive surge of water. They will try their best to regulate the waterflow, but everyone should start preparing for the worst.
River water level at an all time high.
They advised all residents to start packing and moving things to higher places. The ones who are living next to the river side are to commence evacuation.
RADION's office is in a rented shophouse on a relatively high ground. According to the local residents, this area has never ever been flooded. And yet today, flood waters reached just 4 meters from our office and that was before the water was released from the reservoirs !
Water approaches. A view from the 3rd level of our Chiang Mai Office.
Getting all the stores up from level 1 to level 2 & 3 !
On the other hand there was an impending flood to our office and it may be better to be with my staff in Chiang Mai in this disaster, not to mention it will definitely be safer.
I had to make a difficult call.
We decided to take a calculated risk to quickly complete the move and press on to Phetchabun, where people are waiting for us to arrive for the mass food distribution. It was nerve wrecking, we could have been swept away if we crossed the bridge at the wrong time or could even be cut off by the running water down in the next province.
We jumped on our trucks, made the move and as the truck crossed the bursting river, the waters were already almost reaching the top of the bridge. But more bad news awaited on the other side of the river. Instead of clear roads, we were blocked by hordes of vehicles trying to get out, it was like a scene in an evacuation movie.
The heaviest traffic on a Thursday afternoon !
Waters were rising and we were stuck there in a JAM ! It surely felt like we were sitting ducks. After almost 1 hour, we made it out into the freeway and made our way down to Phetchabun.
Heavy rains, saw a couple of landslides, some roads were even broken off, rescue troops were in position in Phitsanulok province, the final town in the valley before heading up to Phetchabun. The rescue troops had their strobe lights and they were just for the waters to rise further before finally closing the entire access road off.
Just one of the many landslides spotted along the way
We barely made it through ! Both sides of the road was covered in water and we quickly made our way up mountain. We did a call check with our Chiang Mai center and they confirmed that water has been released but miraculously our office was unaffected !
God is awesome !
As we drove up along mountains in awe of God, my deputy head Ms Puu started sharing openly about the time when she started working with RADION.
She's a professional accountant and mentioned that when she first joined RADION, she was simply astounded about our faith in God, despite the lack of finances. She jested "When you passed me the 100,000bht, i assumed that we would have more in other bank accounts, but that was EVERYTHING we had in Thailand."
She continued "I've seen missionaries and social workers. Every one I knew had a salary or a church to fall back on. They had all the practicalities taken care of, some have a lump sum of money to do their projects, while others have a monthly allowance to keep them going. Essentially, their needs were taken care of and all they had to do was to concentrate on serving the Lord in their ministries."
She continued.
"But you. When i met you, you had nothing. Surely no lump sum in the bank. No church to back you up. You had hardly any salary. But yet chose to serve despite all the uncertainties and without any "practicalities" to back you up. I saw that you had nothing to fall back on..... just God."
As she spoke, I remembered those days.
The days which we went against impossible odds to continue serving the Hmong people. We could even hardly afford a coke, having to think twice before buying the cheapest toothbrush and sleeping on the floor so we could channel more money to feed the needy.
Puu continued reminiscing, while I had tears filling up in my eyes and trying focus on the dimly litted road as I drove up to Phetchabun.
She continued and her next word brought tears rolling down my cheeks....
She said "God was like your guarantee, you needed nothing else."
What a beautiful reminder. God is my guarantee !
The 4 years of ministry, the 4 years of God's faithfulness. What a beautiful picture indeed !
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