What We Saw in Hawaii | Maui Update

Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here with Mark Arenas.

Mark is the Director of Outreach for Harvest and Mark, you just got back from the island of Maui. You were there hours ago. Tell us what it's like to be on the ground there. Tell us what it looks like and what you're hearing from people. Yeah, it was, it's a devastating sight. I mean, it looks like a war-torn community. I mean, you've seen the videos and you've seen the camera footage of what it looks like. It is just, you cannot believe that this was a thriving community.

You know, I hear the number one tourist location in the world is the island of Maui and to look at what it looks like now, it's absolutely devastating. The fire was started with the huge winds and then what, the power lines sparked the fire. That's probably the origin of it. That's what they're saying. Yeah, it looks like it started up on the hill and you know, 70, 80 mile an hour winds is what they're saying.

Knocked down some type of power line and then the fire was started, came right down the hill, started the houses and jumped the main highway and within 24 hours destroyed that whole community. So right now Samaritan's Purse has just landed a DC-8 in the airport there. They're unloading things to help. I know that they have a semi on a barge coming over as well. There's other organizations like Operation Blessing from CBN and many other Christian organizations will be there as well.

So Mark, I know people have asked me over and over, what can I do? What's the best thing that we can do for the island of Maui and more specifically for the people that have suffered this horrible tragedy? They've got a year or so ahead of them before any type of normalcy is going to happen there. So I'd say the number one thing that we can be doing as a community is praying for them. These are people who lost not just their homes, not just their livelihood for a lot of them, but also their community. I mean their sense of community. But I will tell you, it is amazing to see the love and the joy that a lot of them that a lot of them have and that how they've rallied around.

I mean there is no one sleeping on the streets. The community has embraced those who have lost and there's families living with families and their food resources. They've done an amazing job of getting food and water and diapers for these kids. So I think right now we've got a relief fund that we've established here at Harvest and we're going to be there for the long haul. It's the Harvest Maui Relief Fund.

You go to harvest.org. But you went to our church, Harvest Kumalani, for the services us last Sunday. Tell me about how they were doing. They were hurting, they're grieving, but they're also joyful and optimistic and they know that good is going to come from this. And they came to church and most of them were members of our church that live on the island and really they found community and prayer and encouragement and it was a great time of worship and prayer and you could just see their spirits lifted by coming together as the church. Yeah you know the Bible says that God can bring beauty out of ashes and that's what we're going to see happening for our people is God's going to be glorified. You know there are things that happen Mark as you know that are tragic and they'll always be tragic and sometimes people take Romans 8 28 which says we know that all things work together for good to those that love God now they're called according to his purpose and they think well that means that God will take bad things and make them good. Actually sometimes that's true but other times there are things that are bad that will always be bad but good will come despite the bad right and that's what we're praying for beauty out of ashes opportunities to minister opportunities to lead people to Christ showing them God's love in a tangible way because this is where the church can shine right you know if people can see what Christians really are what does the Bible say they'll know we're Christians that we because we have love one for another and it's not just for each other it's for the world it's for non-believers hey it's even for our enemies right that's right and you know as we start working on plans to help you know we're going to be sending teams down there we're going to we're going to do ministry we're going to make sure that that community knows that Harvest Kumalani Harvest Maui that we love them that we're here to support them and we're going to point them all to Jesus because he is the answer through all of this that's right so if you want to be a part of what we're doing go to harvest.org you can invest in the future of the people of Maui going to harvest.org and investing in the Harvest Maui Relief Fund so we'll keep you updated more to come as we find out more but thank you for praying and let's see what the Lord will do. God bless you.