Skip to main content

Grieving AirAsia Flight Families: 'God Is Bigger than This'

Share This article

The search for victims and wreckage from AirAsia Flight 8501 is turning into a race against time due to poor weather conditions.

Search crews began finding wreckage and bodies Tuesday in the Java Sea, but strong winds and heavy rain are now hampering their efforts.

So far, only seven bodies have been recovered of the 162 people who were aboard the plane.

Meanwhile, about 100 relatives have remained at the Surabaya Airport in Indonesia, where the pastor of a local church prayed with them on New Year's Eve.

"Help us, God, to move forward, even though we are surrounded by darkness," Rev. Philip Mantofa prayed.

Before breaking up, those gathered stood together and sang "I Surrender All" with their hands reaching upward.

"Some things do not make sense to us, but God is bigger than all this. Our God is not evil," Mantofa said.

The pastor said about 40 members of his church were aboard Flight 8501. Nearly all the passengers on the plane were Indonesian and many were Christians of Chinese descent.

Share This article

About The Author

CBN
News

CBN News is a national/international, nonprofit news organization that provides programming 24 hours a day by cable, satellite and the Internet. Staffed by a group of acclaimed news professionals, CBN News delivers stories to over a million viewers each day without a specific agenda. With its headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va., CBN News has bureaus in Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and elsewhere around the world. What began as a segment on CBN's flagship program, The 700 Club, in the early 1980s, CBN News has since expanded into a multimedia news organization that offers today's news headlines