Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

Chapter 8 Myanmar Miracle – Cyclone Nargis

“ W ill you allow your husband to go with me to Myanmar?” Bill Henderson asked Dot over the phone. “I will allow my husband to go anywhere God calls him to go ,” she answered. Brother Bill and I quickly got busy putting a disaster relief team together to fly 7,960 miles from Los Angeles to Myanmar. Myanmar, a country adjacent to the Bay of Bengal in mainland Southeast Asia, formerly known as Burma, had been struck by Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. The hardest hit area was the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta near Yangon. The wind and storm surge of Cyclone Nargis killed an estimated 140,000 people and left nearly $10 billion in damage. Relief efforts were slowed for political reasons as Myanmar’s iron-fisted military rulers initially resisted large-scale international aid. Hampering the relief efforts, only ten days after the cyclone, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake occurred nearby. According to multiple news sources, this devastating earthquake measured 7.9 in magnitude, taking 87,476 lives. It also caused $150 billion in damage in the process, making it the costliest disaster in this area’s history and fourth-costliest disaster ever known. . We were told that Myanmar’s military junta, who ruled the country, had rejected humanitarian aid from the U.S. Navy and they had also prohibited disaster relief and aid from Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham’s ministry. Some donated items slowly filtered through the

141