Central America (MNN) — Initial damage reports from Hurricane Iota aren’t looking good. The storm killed dozens in Nicaragua and severely damaged or destroyed 98-percent of the infrastructure on a small Colombian island. Iota officially dissipated earlier this week, but its wrath remains.
Forecasters predict extensive rainfall over parts of Central America already deluged by back-to-back storms. Helen Williams says World Missionary Press has some good news for partners on the ground.
“This container that you and I have talked about before is leaving our docks next week to head to Honduras. It has literature on it that they’ve been waiting for for months,” Williams says.
“We think this is propitious, [how] the Lord is going to allow the Word to get there, into the hands of people, as they’re in the greatest need of encouragement and hope.”
Printed in Spanish at the WMP headquarters, these Scripture booklets point readers to Jesus.
Hurricane Iota on November 15, 2020.
(Photo, caption courtesy of NOAA via Wikimedia Commons)
“When you’re sitting in a pile, so to speak, you need to get your eyes lifted to eternal values. And that’s what this will do,” Williams says.
“They help people focus on something besides the thing that’s right in front of them, and the Scripture gives hope.”
Prayer works
This year’s Atlantic hurricane season is the busiest on record. Earlier this month, Hurricane Eta left a wide swath of destruction and claimed more than 130 lives. “About the time they’re trying to put roofs back on their houses, this one came in,” Williams says of Hurricane Iota, which made landfall less than two weeks after Eta.
“[It arrived in] the same areas where the other storm was, so the roads are impassable. Now, getting supplies in is going to be very difficult [because] they’ve had no chance to recover.”
Williams says she’s received minimal updates from WMP partners in Honduras.
“Our national coordinator sent me a video of him trying to drive in the rain, and it was just unbelievable. He said he tried to get to a shelter but it was so bad that he had to turn around,” Williams recounts.
Early on, forecasters expected Iota to land in Honduras. A second WMP partner tells Williams they were in the forecast “target zone” and immediately took to prayer.
“He said, ‘The hurricane [was] scheduled to hit areas in which I’m located. We had a prayer vigil and the storm literally moved about 50 miles south of where we are, changing the target trajectory’.”
Knowing the power prayer holds, “pray for the people of Nicaragua and Honduras especially, and all the Central American areas,” Williams requests. “People are working hard to meet needs, but the needs are great.”
With a population of over 7.6 million people, Honduras is the second-largest nation in Central America.
(Photo, caption courtesy of World Missionary Press)
By giving to World Missionary Press, you can help underwrite the printing and shipping costs associated with delivering Scripture booklets to believers overseas.
“World Missionary Press – all we provide is literature, but in these times we often hear, ‘Send us more; now is the time,’” Williams says.
“When the doors to countries open; when tragedy hits and people are going in to meet needs, they want to take the literature with them. We want to be prepared and sensitive to those needs.”
Header image is a cropped, black and white image of Hurricane Iota. This picture contains modified imagery from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite. (Photo, caption credit: Copernicus Sentinel data (2020)/ESA,CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO)
