His internet is often out due to tsunamis, flooding and power outages. This happens multiple times a year, and this time it’s due to both tropical storms and flooding along with 6-8 magnitude earthquakes.
This young man lives with and cares for his invalid mother, who is a stroke victim. Multiple times a year they have to board up their windows and hang their belongings from the ceiling of the house to keep it above the flooding before being shuttled to evacuation centers.
Then they return to clean up again, salvage, rebuild and try to carry on with their lives. It is an impoverished existence and yet Anthony is always courteous, responsive, eager to work and he does good work in his areas of familiarity.
Perspective
Anthony sent this message on Skype through his phone:
“We are struggling with a series of earthquakes happening in the region of Mindanao.
This started last month starting with a magnitude 4 then 5 then nowadays it’s always at the scale of 6.
Phivolcs said we’re going to experience it almost everyday until the big one magnitude 8.0 to 9.0 to occur. Today as we experience this alarming earthquake, our homes needs repair, we are not safe. Most of the structures here in the Philippines are not earthquake proof nor flood proof. Still old buildings exists, communications are not that flexible and modern. Everytime earthquake happened we lost our connection and power for a day or more. Even my backup internet is failing due to typhoon and rains in the evening.
The latest report said people of Mindanao are going to experience after shocks for 6 months - plus we do not know when the big one will hit.
I am informing you in advance with the current situation we are facing here in Mindanao as people lost their homes and many are displaced. I am very much worried of my work on my clients. Hopefully you are still informed and would give consideration for us freelancers here in Mindanao especially we are living near the central Mindanao (where the big one to start to occur). If we fail to notify in 24hours (if the communications totally not working). Please give us time to recover and hopefully we can get back to work. And today we just experienced another 6.8 magnitude, A condo has collapse 30 mins ago.”
Life is about the living we put into each moment.
So everyone everywhere has problems and struggles to deal with. It is a part of life. But we can always count our blessings and focus on gratitude for the gains and not the gaps.
And we count you as one of our blessings. 💜🙏🏻🌟
