Myanmar @ MindSay 
I would like to start out by sending out my deepest condolences to Myanmar and China.
As most of you already know, Myanmar was hit with a terrible cyclone just over 2 weeks ago, killing 34,273 and counting. The unfortunate part of the Myanmar cyclone, the part that hits hard, is the United Nation's estimate thar up to 40% of those who were killed in the cyclone were children.
Another thing that most of you already know, China was hit with a 7.9 earthquake, just a day ago, killing 10,000 and nearly 10,000 remain missing.
I can't even begin to imagine such disasters hitting home. Even Hurricanes Katrina, not to trivialize this tragic event, only had 1,500 deaths, which fail in comparison to the estimated 45,000 already dead between these two horrifying disasters.
I pray to all of you to follow in my and many others footsteps by getting disaster responses training. There is a some time and effort put into the training but its worth it even if all you save is one life.
"When we first saw the bodies floating past, we were sad and afraid,” said Aung Win, a 45-year-old rice farmer, who seemed to have survived because his house is made of hardwood. “Now we just say, here comes another body."
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This is sad when this is a part of YOUR life. As much as I seen stuff like this on the TV, I can't imagine it in real life.
Life is war. It is difficult, no matter where we live. However, to help us keep things in perspective, when we’re annoyed with things like slow traffic or download times, here’s an excerpt from an article about the situation in Burma:
“Thein Tun, a 44-year-old bus conductor in the village who is out of work because all the buses were destroyed, said food was scarce and the well water contaminated.
‘The diarrhea is coming,’ he said, echoing a grave concern among aid officials that the death toll could rise quickly if clean water and medicine does not arrive here soon.
Lacking alternatives, villagers are eating waterlogged bananas and other rotting fruit, he said.
‘Normally we have two meals,’ Thein Tun said. ‘Now we eat only once.’ Yet, of the two dozen people interviewed in the flattened villages and flooded rice fields along the road, none said they were starving.
Most rice reserves were soaked during the storm, but villagers have laid the grains on large plastic mats to dry. The rice has a musty smell, but farmers say they have no choice but to eat it.
‘It tastes bad, but if we can eat it we will,’ said Than Tun, 43, a rice farmer. ‘If not, we will throw it to the pigs.’”
The link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/09/asia/scene.php
The images we see, provided by the press, thankfully don’t show the horrors of tens of thousands of dead individuals in the country of Burma, also known as Myanmar.
Please pray for those who survived this storm. Please pray for adequate food, clean water, sanitation, clothing and shelter. Ask the Lord to comfort those who have lost loved ones.
There are many things that happen on this earth for which there are simply no quick and easy answers. This is one of them. Jesus Himself didn’t provide a “why” about tragedies. He only warned us not to think that people who died in these ways were greater sinners than we are.
OH, MY, SUCH DEVASTATION,
CREATOR BE WITH THIS PEOPLE, HELP THOSE WHO ARE ALIVE , BRING THOSE IN THE WORLD ABLE TO PROVIDE HELP FOR THESE PEOPLE , TOGETHER QUICKLY , SO THAT THOSE THAT SURVIVE WILL NOT HAVE ANY MORE TRAMA IN THEIR LIVES.
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Myanmar cyclone death toll soars past 22,000:
state radio
21 minutes ago
The cyclone death toll soared above 22,000 on Tuesday and more than 41,000 others were missing as the international community prepared to rush in aid after the country's deadliest storm on record, state radio reported.
Up to 1 million people may be homeless after Cyclone Nargis, some villages have been almost totally eradicated and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out, the World Food Program said.
Some aid agencies reported their assessment teams had reached some areas of the largely isolated region but said getting in supplies and large numbers of aid workers would be difficult.
Images from state television showed large trees and electricity poles sprawled across roads and roofless houses ringed by large sheets of water in the Irrawaddy River delta region, which is regarded as Myanmar's rice bowl.
"From the reports we are getting, entire villages have been flattened and the final death toll may be huge," Mac Pieczowski, who heads the International Organization for Migration office in Yangon, said in a statement.
Shari Villarosa, the top American diplomat in Yangon, told NBC's "Today" show that the cyclone had knocked huge trees in the country's largest city.
"And it blew down a significant portion of them, some of these are 6, 8, 10 stories tall — huge trees, 6 feet, 5 feet in diameter. So they came down on roofs," she said.
State radio also said that Saturday's vote on a military-backed draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, which took the brunt of the weekend storm. It indicated that the balloting would proceed in other areas as scheduled.
The decision drew swift criticism from dissidents and human rights groups who question the credibility of the vote and urged the junta to focus on disaster victims.
Myanmar's generals have hailed the referendum as an important step forward in their "roadmap to democracy." It offers the first chance for voters to cast ballots since 1990, and the probability is high they will approve the constitution — a legal framework the country has lacked for two decades.
But critics, including the United Nations, the United States and human rights groups, question whether it will lead to democracy.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Its government has been widely criticized for suppression of pro-democracy parties such as the one led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.
At least 31 people were killed and thousands more were detained when the military cracked down on peaceful protests in September led by Buddhist monks and democracy advocates.
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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