Heavy Rains and Mudslides in Chiquimula

Hello,

Below is an urgent request for prayer from my friend and fellow missionary Nancy Sheldon who lives only 40 minutes away from us.. The rain has been ongoing and has become life-threatening. In our area, thank God, everyone we know is okay. No one has lost their lives or homes. She is not in danger where she lives.

Our concern is the fault lines because we did have an earthquake here a few years ago and the epic-center was in the area of Jocotan/Camotan and we felt it right in our home. Thank God there was little or no damage in any the areas from the epic-center on out.

Thank you for your prayers.

Love, Myra


Hi everyone,
I wrote a prayer request that was going to appear in the webpage changes for August but those won't be posted until next week and I wanted to get some prayer action going as our situation is escalating here.

We have a crisis in this part of Guatemala. The fault lines are very unstable and are moving. This is further complicated by the fact that we are having excessive rain. I have never in 20 years wrote to ask for the rains to be calmed; we have always prayed for more rain. But the ground in saturated, the river is overflowing and there is no place for the water to go. A "crater" has opened up in Jocotan and they can't even determine the depth because it seems to be a bottomless pit. Water continues to fall in it and so is looking for tunnels and outlets, further weakening the ground.

86 families had to be evacuated from Jocotan yesterday. I spent the afternoon helping my secretary's family (Lidia) who was one family and a number of other families to go to new housing locations. Lidia found a house to rent although the owners put it at double the rent, taking advantage of the situation.....knowing that someone would take it. People are being housed in 2 evangelical churches, the catholic church and the theater in town.

In Camotan we received 1300 refugees yesterday. 800 people from La Union are here, a town about an hour or a little more away. Houses have been buried and some have fallen into holes where the earth has opened up. They were blocked off from 2 out of the 3 routes to leave. One route has 120 landslides in a 38 kilometer stretch. We have 400 people in the gymnasium in Camotan. That was as of last night and more could have arrived during the night. They were supposed to evacuate another 500 people from Caparja, which is the border town crossing over into Honduras. We also have people at the catholic church, an evangelical school and a public school in Camotan. The president is supposed to arrive at 10am this morning. We are trying to help with the immediate need, knowing that it will take a few days to get organized and wait for help to arrive. One of our church ladies started making tortillas at 5am this morning and we hope to have 400-500 to pass out by lunch time. We are also making a rice drink to hand out. We have 12 people staying at my sister's house from La Union, that I know.

At first it was a temporary measure to have the families leave their homes in Jocotan but now they are saying that they cannot return.....ever! People are having to walk away from their homes. The government is talking about doing a housing project for those affected, but I am not real confident about that. I went through this 11 years ago with Hurricane Mitch. The people were promised to be relocated into nice block homes and eventually received a 12 foot square cement slab with a weak tin roof over it....hardly what they had been promised!

Late last night they were supposed to open up the flood gates to a dam in Honduras. This is what caused our problem with Mitch in 1997. A piece of the dam broke and brought us a "wall of water" on Jocotan washing 86 homes down the river. This time, thankfully, they decided to release the excess water in a controlled way, before it broke. It will still send us more water but in a controlled way and it doesn't appear to have caused any more damage for us last night.

By later this morning they are supposed to have a census of exactly who is here and have them registered. We will then have more accurate information. We want to do what we can to try to help in this crisis. We ask for your prayers.

Blessings,
Nancy