00:00:06 We always see
00:00:09 on JW Broadcasting®
00:00:11 experiences of how
00:00:12 Jehovah takes care of other people.
00:00:14 But you never think
00:00:15 that it’s going to happen to you.
00:00:38 I’ve just never seen—
00:00:39 I couldn’t see the street or anything.
00:00:41 It was so intense—the rain.
00:00:43 You could just sense the terror.
00:00:46 I mean, it was a raging torrent.
00:00:49 It felt like the mountain was coming down.
00:01:02 The city was under water.
00:01:06 There was so much water
00:01:08 that it was chest high.
00:01:10 Even in the Kingdom Hall,
00:01:13 the level rose above the waist.
00:01:16 The chairs were just floating.
00:01:18 It was shocking to see the amount of water
00:01:21 that was actually inside the Kingdom Hall.
00:01:24 In one week, there were seven floods,
00:01:28 and each one was just as bad as the last one.
00:01:32 Again, I still didn’t understand how bad,
00:01:34 and a brother said, “Maybe you better come up to this area.”
00:01:37 So when I got there, it was devastation.
00:01:39 If it was a two-story house,
00:01:42 the first story was full of mud
00:01:44 so now the second story was on street level.
00:01:48 In a rainfall of only five hours,
00:01:50 everything was swept away
00:01:52 —all the houses of the brothers.
00:01:54 When we got there the next day, it seemed like a bomb had gone off.
00:01:58 Everything was blown apart.
00:02:04 We visited one family, and the brother said:
00:02:07 “I can’t go to the meeting. I don’t have a pair of shoes,
00:02:09 and my wife just has the clothes on her back.”
00:02:16 One of the local sisters who lost everything
00:02:18 worked so hard to build a beautiful home
00:02:23 —a beautiful, comfortable home—
00:02:26 and it was all destroyed in a moment by a landslide.
00:02:29 And to hear her say
00:02:31 that just like the Bible says that you should ‘store up treasures in heaven,
00:02:35 where moth and rust do not consume’
00:02:38 —I wish I could put a picture of it in my Bible so that every time
00:02:41 I read it I’ll think of that.
00:02:43 She had regrets.
00:02:46 It just taught me that service to Jehovah is always worthwhile.
00:02:51 We can work so hard in this system of things to have a comfortable life,
00:02:55 but there’s no guarantee; we can lose it so quickly.
00:02:58 But the service that we have to Jehovah
00:03:00 —it lasts forever; it will never be destroyed.
00:03:04 It was time to get organized with groups of brothers
00:03:08 to go and help to clean up the homes of the ones that were affected.
00:03:12 It seemed like everywhere you looked there were brothers and sisters.
00:03:17 They arrived in trucks and buses with buckets, brooms,
00:03:21 and mops to help clean out the homes of those affected.
00:03:28 We were cleaning out one house, . . .
00:03:29 . . . our very first house . . .
00:03:31 . . . our very first house.
00:03:32 And the sisters were putting down bags
00:03:35 to put dirt on the bags.
00:03:36 And then carrying them.
00:03:37 And then carrying them, right?
00:03:39 And somebody said,
00:03:42 “Man, it would be nice to have a wheelbarrow.”
00:03:43 And so we’re digging it out,
00:03:45 and there’s a wheelbarrow . . .
00:03:47 . . . in the mud . . .
00:03:48 . . . in the mud.
00:03:48 And we said: “Hey, there, Jehovah gave us a wheelbarrow!”
00:03:51 So we got the wheelbarrow out, and that really helped.
00:03:53 We were going to one house of a family of Witnesses.
00:03:57 It was very difficult to get into the house because we couldn’t get
00:04:00 the front door open because of all the mud.
00:04:02 Once we actually got into the house,
00:04:04 it was like, “Where do we start?”
00:04:06 Yeah, it was overwhelming.
00:04:09 There was one brother who just stood there,
00:04:12 watching from inside the middle of the house, wasn’t he?
00:04:14 Yeah. We kind of thought,
00:04:15 ‘Why isn’t he helping?’
00:04:18 And then we realized after a while that this was his house.
00:04:21 He explained that after each of the floods during the week, he cleaned his house out.
00:04:26 And then another flood came, and he cleaned his house out.
00:04:29 And he did another one, until it got to the sixth one.
00:04:33 And after that, he’d lost all his energy,
00:04:37 all his spirit, so he just left it.
00:04:40 He couldn’t do anymore.
00:04:41 I think we realized at that point that it wasn’t just important
00:04:45 to go and dig someone’s house out.
00:04:47 It was important to take care of them as well.
00:04:51 We realized that during this disaster,
00:04:53 a lot of the friends
00:04:55 needed spiritual encouragement, and that’s what we really wanted to bring.
00:04:59 We gave them a hug to show them that we love them and appreciate them,
00:05:03 even though they went through a very hard time.
00:05:05 Just as the Bible says that when one member suffers,
00:05:09 the rest of the body also suffers and feels the pain,
00:05:12 and we could sense this among the brothers there.
00:05:15 Even brothers from the Branch Committee
00:05:17 came to the area, visiting each publisher personally
00:05:22 in order to encourage those who had been affected by the disaster.
00:05:25 A special meeting was arranged where they gave talks.
00:05:28 All this helped us
00:05:30 to see that Jehovah was there.
00:05:32 He was sending his servants to upbuild us.
00:05:35 The spirit of the Governing Body,
00:05:37 and also through the Branch Committee,
00:05:39 was to show love to the brothers.
00:05:41 They wanted us to make sure that they
00:05:44 were spiritually strengthened during these critical times.
00:05:48 “We’re worried about you.
00:05:50 How are you?”
00:05:52 Just hearing them say that was like a pat on the back
00:05:55 —a hug from Jehovah saying, ‘You’re not alone;
00:05:57 you have your brothers.’
00:06:01 You know, it’s one thing to read about things like that,
00:06:04 but to see it in action—that’s another thing.
00:06:07 You definitely saw love.
00:06:10 That is our identifying mark, isn’t it?
00:06:13 The friends were there early in the morning and late at night,
00:06:16 walking through mud —mud on their face,
00:06:21 mud in their hair.
00:06:23 They just really showed love in many different ways,
00:06:26 and we just want to say thank you to all the friends.
00:06:29 Jehovah understands
00:06:31 what we need and when we need it,
00:06:33 and he gives us more than what we expect.
00:06:35 To see that no matter what happens, Jehovah is always going to take care of us
00:06:39 —that’s awesome!
00:06:41 The Disaster Relief Committee received a letter from a family.
00:06:46 They said, “The floods can destroy our home,
00:06:51 “but they cannot destroy
00:06:53 “our love for Jehovah and the love that we have for him
00:06:56 and he has for us.”
00:07:02 We don’t know what situations
00:07:04 our brothers will have to face as this system winds down to a finish.
00:07:08 But one thing we know for certain
00:07:10 is that we can count on the support of Jehovah and his organization.
00:07:23 If we’re not part of this organization, what do we have?
00:07:26 We’ve got nothing.
00:07:27 That’s what nothing is.
00:07:29 When I talk about people losing homes and stuff,
00:07:31 those are just material things.
00:07:33 But staying with the organization,
00:07:37 this is the truth.
00:07:39 What an honor!
00:07:41 What a privilege to be part of this!
