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SALT LAKE CITY — Three days after Cyclone Pam slammed the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, LDS Church leaders continue to battle power and communications outages while trying to contact its missionaries in the region.
All missionaries on the main island of Efate are in the capital city of Port Vila and are safe, but communications lines remain down to the nation's outer islands.
Vanuatu Port Vila Mission President Larry Brewer instructed all missionaries to prepare for and seek shelter two to three days before the cyclone hit with 185 mph winds. They all moved to the safest locations on their islands, according to a press release issued Monday morning by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
For example, 40 missionaries on Efate stayed at the Port Vila Mission home during the storm.
The church's Pacific Area Headquarters created a blog with the latest information for families of Vanuatu missionaries.
The Vanuatu mission is divided into three separate areas — Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. All the missionaries in the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia areas are safe.
No communication is possible to the Vanuatu island of Tanna, which took the full brunt of the storm and is home to 11 LDS missionaries, but the Pacific Area blog reported that all 11 had moved before the storm to a safe building on the safest part of the island.
You worry, and being on the opposite side of the world all you can do is pray for them. It's great to have social media to help get information about what is going on.
–Sister Margaret Gunn
Sister Margaret Gunn, who is serving in the New Caledonia area of the Vanuatu mission, sent her mother a calm email describing rain blowing sideways. Sherry Gunn also said the LDS stake president's wife in New Caledonia posted a message on a Facebook page for missionary moms on Friday night telling them all the missionaries had been warned and were prepared and not to worry.
"From here, watching that radar as the big eye of that storm dragged across Vanuatu was difficult," Gunn said. "It was a huge relief to hear from (the stake president's wife) and know those in New Caledonia were all OK. You worry, and being on the opposite side of the world all you can do is pray for them. It's great to have social media to help get information about what is going on."
In the church's Fiji Suva Mission 750 miles to the east, all missionaries are safe and accounted for after leaders contacted a final set of two missionaries in the remote island nation of Tuvalu, where communications lines had been down.
The United Nations reported that the storm was so devastating that every school on Vanuatu's islands was destroyed or damaged. Vanuatu's president told Reuters "more than 90 percent of the buildings have been destroyed."
Australian news agency ABC reported that aid agencies are calling the situation the most challenging they have ever faced.
At least 24 people are dead, but officials worry the number will rise rapidly as communications are restored.
The LDS church has 24,000 members spread throughout the islands of Vanuatu, Fiji and Tuvalu. The storm's destructive force affected many of them. UNICEF reported the storm affected at least half the people of Vanuatu, including 54,000 children.
LDS meetinghouses — many of them made of solid concrete — on Efate and elsewhere have become shelters for Latter-day Saints and others who lost their homes. ABC News reported that 85 percent of homes in Port Vila were destroyed.
The church said people who want to help can donate to the faith's humanitarian fund through their local congregation or via LDS Philanthropies.
The Vanuatu Port Vila Mission was created in 2012. Previously, the area had been part of the Fiji mission.
More than 6,100 Latter-day Saints live in Vanuatu, which has 31 LDS congregations and a total population of 260,000.
Another 17,730 Mormons live in Fiji, which has an LDS temple in Suva and 50 LDS congregations.
The LDS Church has 205 members in a single congregation in Tuvalu, which has a total population of about 10,000.
The church also has 564 members in the Solomon Islands and 2,230 in New Caledonia.
