Tess Rivers

MANILA, Philippines (BP)--"It took me four hours to swim home," says Mac Reyes, youth pastor at International Baptist Church of Manila.       He and Derick Jacinto, the church administrator, were at a church meeting Sept. 26 when Typhoon Ketsana began pouring out its wrath on Metro Manila.       As news spread of widespread flooding throughout the Asian megacity, the group was advised to stay put. But a few hours later, Reyes received a frantic text message from his wife that the water was rising rapidly in their home. He set out for home -- on foot.       The way home for him was down Marcos Highway, a four-lane expressway that runs through northeast Manila, where the flooding was at its worst. Along with hundreds of others, Reyes pushed toward home. As night fell, water was up to his chest.       "I became a sort of traffic cop on Marcos Highway," Reyes said. "There was no electricity, and I used the light from my cell phone to help direct people to the safest path."       He reached his neighborhood but found he couldn't reach his house. He was able to reach them by cell phone.       "My wife and son abandoned the house and moved to a Catholic church in our neighborhood," Reyes said. "From there, they moved to another church where they waited out the storm."       Reyes swam against the current to reach the church where his wife and son were waiting. Days passed before they could return home.       MUDDING OUT       Jacinto chose to spend that Saturday night at the church after learning his family was safe on the second floor of his sister's townhouse. He, his wife and three children live in the first floor of the townhouse. He headed out early Sunday and was reunited with his family members a few hours later. On Tuesday, with water still standing in the bottom level of his home, Jacinto found tire inner tubes and floated his family to safety.       "My kids thought it was fun," Jacinto smiled. "They said, 'Oh, Daddy, let's go swimming!'"

MANILA, Philippines (BP)--When Tropical Storm Ketsana blew through Manila Sept. 26, it dumped more rain in six hours than the Philippines' capital normally receives the entire month of September, resulting in what has been called the worst flood in 40 years.       In any city, such rainfall would lead to flooding. For a crowded city that sits below sea level with an underdeveloped sewage system, the results proved disastrous. By late Saturday afternoon, the government reported 80 percent of Manila was under water.       More than 240 people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands are displaced. Southern Baptist missionaries living in Manila expect the death toll to climb higher.       "Just in my area of town alone," said Jill Harvell, a missionary living in Quezon City, "I can think of 22 people who have died as a result of this storm.       "People have been stranded on their rooftops for three days without food and water. Cars were floating down the streets. I've never seen anything like it."       It is the worst flood that Shirley Seale, who has served in the Philippines since 1987, can recall.

BRENTWOOD, Tenn. (BP)–Few, if any, congregations have faced this challenge: designing a worship center specifically for the deaf culture. “When we started building, we had no other model in the world to look at,” said Brian Sims, pastor of Brentwood Baptist Deaf Church (BBDC) in Brentwood, Tenn. “[W]e had some unique engineering challenges to overcome.” […]

TAIPEI, Taiwan (BP)--Ruth Bruffey first came to the Deaflympics games in 1961 as a track and field athlete with the U.S. Deaflympic Team. This year, Bruffey returned to the Deaflympics to tell others about Jesus.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (BP)--From deaf churches and interpretative ministries across the United States, they came to Taipei, Taiwan, with one common goal -- to share the power of Jesus with every person they would meet.