Please pray for our city of Beira as, once again, we are facing another oncoming hurricane-force storm.
"Eloise" is predicted to be a Category 2 cyclone by the time it makes landfall Friday night (Jan 22). You know it's serious when it even makes the news in the USA.
Not even a full month ago, on December 30 we had another tropical storm called Chalane, and when the weather predictions started circulating it sent the city of Beira into a flurry of preparations. People bought huge buckets for water reserves, boarded up windows, and placed sacks of sand on their roofs to keep them from flying away.
All over town, you can see boards on windows and sacks of sand on roofs.
Thankfully, Chalane turned out to be quite mild, and left no real damage to speak of. But the good thing was that it got people to prepare, and most did not bother to undo their preparations, so now they're already braced for Cyclone Eloise!
However, we have been having a decidedly wet rainy season so far, with mild flooding all over the city and many villages in our pancake-flat terrain. We have a brand new project in a village nearby called Nhamapusso that has had significant trouble with floods. Any added water is going to be a strain on the already saturated drainage systems.
Praise Reports:
That we feel our city is much better prepared for this storm than they were for Cyclone Idai in 2019.
Prayer Requests:
That the storm will diminish rather than increase as it heads toward land.
That it will not hit at high tide, which could create a disastrous storm surge with lots of flooding.
That we will be well-positioned to help any who struggle through the storm.
That infrastructure like electricity, communications, and roads will not be badly damaged.
Thanks for reading, please remember us in your prayers!
