I have been in the Philippines for exactly a month today. It has been the adventurous and challenging month I have probably ever had before. It has been a weird feeling of adapting to being here in the sense that I know that I will be living here for 2 years so this isn't just a trip, this is my home. I thought that that would be very challenging, but in reality it hasn't been. I miss home and the people and things I had back home, but I haven't felt like this place isn't my home. It is so welcoming and has helped me feel at home, even on the other side of the world. Things have been going well, the more experience I have here, the more things I learn and the better prepared I am to do everything I need to do. I feel so much more comfortable at the school having been there for three weeks now and seeing how things go and how things work. It is so much easier now then when I was thrown in in the beginning. I have been able to develop relationships with the people around me and my students and it has been awesome getting to know so many people.
We had a small team in from Columbus, Ohio the last week and a half, which was really neat. They came with their youth pastor and three high schoolers. They did construction on Agape or at the Ati school in the mornings, and they went to feedings in the evenings. There are 18 different feeding sites on Boracay and I believe 4 different sites on the other island of Panay. It was a great thing for the sites because a lot of the sites don't get many visitors very often they just get the one or two people to bring the food and do some things with them. So when a team is here it is exciting for those sites because they get to have more people to play with and sing with and just have fun with. The team also had a lot of time to explore the island, snorkel, go sailing, and enjoy the beach. It is a really amazing trip or teams coming here because there is so much culture and so many beautiful things to see and enjoy, yet there are so many opportunities to be able to help make a difference on the island. They were able to leave knowing that they did so much for the island and the school, yet they got so much growth personally from the trip as well.
I have been continuing to go to the feeding site we have behind the barn for the community here on Tuesdays, as well as the feeding site in the Ati village of Carla on Fridays. I also went to another feeding site this Wednesday with the Ohio team called the Salbador site. I think that will probably be my weekly rotation of feeding sites, for now anyways. Going to the feeding sites and seeing where the people live and how little they have is so eye-opening. Seeing where some of my students come from and seeing the conditions that they come from makes it so much more fulfilling to be giving my time helping teach them so that through education they will be able to leave the poverty that surrounds them and the living conditions that are just unbelievable almost.
The feeding behind the jungle barn has been moved inside the barn the last 2 weeks because of the rain. We usually have about 30-40 kids from the neighborhood show up. We start with singing songs that they know from either the school or that they've learned at the feedings. A lot of the kids from the community go to Agape, so it is need being able to minister to them outside of school as well. They do several songs and then they do Bible verses that the head lady in charge of the site does with them. They rehearse the verses and then all sit down for a story. One of the missionaries reads a Bible story to them. After that we have a coloring sheet that usually has to do with the bible story. They all sit down and color their papers. During the coloring we also have a first aid kit type thing to deal with cuts and scrapes the kids have. I was given the doctor job for some reason, maybe they don't think I'm a good teacher of coloring I don't know, but I have been the doctor for the last two weeks. We basically have hydrogen peroxide to clean the wounds, an off brand neosporin, and band-aids. The kids get a lot of cuts on their feet because they are barefoot most of the time, if they have shoes they are flip-flops, which obviously don't help a whole lot. We really want to get the cuts cleaned up though because their feet get so dirty from everything and with rainy season there i so much standing water with who knows what in it. So the more we can clean and help heal their cuts the less chance they have of them getting infected or anything else. After that we have them line up to wash their hands with soap and water before they eat. We give them all a vitamin, and then feed them dinner. After dinner we play some games before we finish and they head back home. Here are some pictures from the jungle barn feedings.
The kids singing and dancing to the songs in the jungle barn.
Kathleen and Toby.
Dudong, Aleche, Angel and others coloring their picture of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
The Salbador feeding was a lot of fun to go to. I got to see a lot of the other side of the island that I hadn't been to before. It was in a poor neighborhood, like all of the feeding sites. they had a small little area that was like the village square kind of place where we did the feeding. It had pretty much the same kind of things, we sang songs, then read a Bible story. They got coloring sheets to color and apparently word had gotten out that I was the new doctor because I was appointed that job again. After that we had them wash their hands, gave them a vitamin, and fed them dinner. The site is run by the pastor's wife Teresa who runs several of the different feeding sites. She was happy to bring me and the Ohio team to this site because they don't usually get a lot of the missionaries at this site for whatever reason. Here are some pictures of the kids at the Salbador site. I don't have a lot of pictures because I am usually doing something so I don't have much time to take pictures. Once you get a camera out the kids flock to you though to be able to see themselves in the camera.
Her name is Hershey, and yes her sister's name is Kisses. She says her mom really likes chocolate.
They all loved having us there to play with and talk to, and hating seeing us leave. I hope to keep coming to this site every week.
The Carla feeding is something I do every Friday after school. We take off right after school ends at 1:30. Carla village is one of the Ati villages, and is the village with the Ati school. It is on the other island so we have to ride over to the port, take a boat across to the island, and then take another trike about 5 miles up to the village. The village is heavily reliant on the rice fields that surround it, and August is known as starving month because apparently they plant the rice in July and harvest it in September, so in August there is no work and no rice. I had that explained to me really quickly so it might not be entirely correct, but what I know for sure is that there is no work and no rice in August. We have a huge number of kids and adults at the feeding because of the extreme poverty that the people are in. The organization is doing a lot of work with the school and the feedings at the Ati villages because of how severe the poverty is. On my trip to Guatemala I saw people living with pretty much nothing. They didn't have electricity, lived in shacks and didn't really have any material possessions. These people are in the same, if not worse living situations. I got to go into a house of one of the families to see a girl names Gemima who had just gotten back from the hospital with a broken femur. She had a semi-body cast over her hip and leg. She lives in the house with her mother and three other siblings, I'm not sure if the father is on the picture or not. They have a house for the 5 or 6 of them that is about half the size of my bedroom at home. The house is made out of bamboo and sits up above the ground with a bamboo lathe floor. There is one room with a curtain that looked like where the parents would probably sleep, that was the size of about two people laying down. Another sort of room that was maybe big enough for four people to lay down in, and the entry room which was very small and just kind of a hall to the two rooms. It looked like a hall but I imagine it is used for sleeping for someone. They don't have beds, just thin little carpet mats to lay on the floor. There is no bathroom, and their kitchen is outside the house with a little bit of a roof to keep the water out. It basically consists of a place to burn wood and a rack to put a pot on to cook something over the fire. They had a few bowls and utensils and things in the kitchen as well. This wasn't a low end Ati house, this was a typical Ati house. They are tiny and don't consist of anything really other than sleeping space and the ability to make food. I had to duck the whole time in the house, which I'm taller than a lot of Filipinos, but still, there wasn't much standing room in the house either. The people are very humble and know how little they have materially, it would be considered rude to take a picture of their house, so I hope I was able to provide an accurate explanation for you to see the kind of situations people are living in.
We have a lot of time to play with the kids at this feeding and they are so much fun and they love just having people to love on them. I never see men from the age of probably 17- 60 around in the villages and I think most of the men are out working somewhere, but from what it sounds like a lot of the father's aren't really around much or very involved in things. So for me to be able to just play with the kids and be able to hug them and show them love is an amazing thing for me to be able to do. They are always climbing all over me and trying to use me in any way imaginable as a human jungle gym. They have overflowing joy even though we would look at them and see how little they had materially. What you learn to realize is that joy doesn't come from materials. You can have all the things in the world and not have joy. We live in a country with more materials than we know what to do with and yet people are constantly depressed and upset with their situations. We have one of the highest suicide rates in the world when it seems like we should be the happiest. The people here have learned to be content with what they have and that's what brings them their joy. They are amazing models for the rest of the world in how to be content and joyful. Here are some pictures of some kids playing at the feeding site.
The bubbles were a huge hit.
The kids starting to line up for dinner. We feed about 70 people at this site.
The wild life here is also a little different than at home. There are roosters everywhere. It seems like everyone has a rooster and they crow at all hours of the night. The sun is nowhere in sight and they are still crowing. We have a bunch that just roam behind the barn and make it very hard to sleep through the night without waking up at some point to a rooster crowing.
There are also several goats that just hang out along the pathway that I come home from school on. The bigger ones are usually tied up to something but the baby goats just roam free. they are so friendly and are usually right on the path so I stop and pet them a lot. They enjoy having their head scratched a lot.
There is a lot of sea life here as well obviously. The kids here love to catch things and bring them around for everyone to see. If a kid is running up to you with a cup it means they caught something, if they are running up to you with a bucket it means they caught something big. They are always catching crabs and carrying them around and there are just a ton of crabs around here to catch. The other day a girl came up with a bucket full of small seahorses. Another group of kids came up with a bucket with a blowfish in it. I was amazed at their ability to catch these things but was really hoping they were going to be putting them back in the ocean and not keep carrying them around, but I'm not really sure.
Not everything here is pretty though. I was in my room at night when all of a sudden something slammed against my window. It ekpt pushing around on my screen and was making a ton of noise so I imagined it had to be pretty big. It was. It was like a giant beetle looking thing, and I was very glad it was too big to fit in any of the holes to get into my room. I don't mind beetles, but when they are big enough to eat small rodents, I prefer them to stay outside.
For a size reference the pieces of wood are a little under 2 inches wide. Making the beetle almost 2 inches wide and about 4 inches long.
Beetles aren't the only ting that comes in an extra large size here. Walking into the barn about to go up the stairs I walked past this little guy.
This thing was about the size of my hand, maybe a little bigger. I wasn't going to put my hand close enough to get an accurate measure. That's a 5 gallon water jug on the side, for somewhat of a size reference. I tried to get a bottle cap to put near it to get a reference but I scared him and he took off and hid. I didn't feel like sticking around to find him. He ran a lot faster than I could. I'm just glad the fight or flight reflex caused him to flea instead of fight, because he probably would have won.
Just in case you wanted a more up close and personal view, here you go.
On a more serious note this has been a very tough weekend for me. I picked up a cold, which isn't a huge surprise. It's rainy season and cold season here. Kids are running around all over the place with runny noses and everything else. So I'm not surprised, but it still doesn't make it any easier. It really hasn't been that bad which I am very thankful for, but I've had a clogged or runny nose and a very sore throat with a little bit of a cough. I haven't had much of a headache of sinus pressure, which I normally have with a cold, although today trying to teach was not easy. It isn't super easy anyways because it is so hot and humid and there's no ac in the school, but adding a cold to the situation didn't help. I'm hoping to get through it quickly, and it hasn't been as bad as normal, it's just frustrating being sick so much. I just got over being sick and now I've got it again. But I guess it's all just making me stronger, so I can deal with that.
Even tougher than this has been the news from home I received about a family friend and someone very close to me who was in the hospital battling through some very tough situations. I am extremely close with his family and it has been so hard not to be there for my friends when they need me in such a tough time. I have missed my friends and family, and I didn't enjoy being stuck in my bed with a sickness, but this was really the first time I wished I was back home. It is one of the toughest feelings I have experienced wanting to be there for your friends and feeling useless because you are on the other side of the world. I have been able to keep getting updates and things are improving with the situation which is so awesome to hear, I have also been able to skype for a few minutes and try to give as much support as possible from over here, but it has been tough. All I can really do is pray and so I continue to pray for him and the family. I was able to talk to some of the other missionaries and we all prayed for it as well.
We had our missionary Bible study again last Thursday and it was a great time to be able to get together and fellowship and dive into some scripture and share what we see from it. One of the verses we went over was Colossians 3:23 which says "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters". It is a verse that can be applied to everyone with everything they do. But when I read it I was really able to apply it to what I'm doing here. It is easy to get wrapped up in trying to do a lot so that I can share it in my blog, and do things in order to impact numbers of people rather than the people themselves, but the reality of it is that I am working for God and I am working with all of my heart in order to serve Him first. One of the things I was talking about with a good friend of mine was not limiting God to our expectations. Meaning to be open to the fact that God has more planned for me than I can ever imagine and is going to do so much more than I could ever expect to do. It is easy to try to plan out who and when you are going to serve, say what you are going to do and how you are going to do it, but when you get out of the way and let God take over you will see things happening you could never have planned to happen. My job isn't to plan out expectations for how to best serve people, but to work with all my heart for Him in whatever He has me do and I will be able to do so much more than I could have planned out. In the sermon on Sunday the youth pastor from the Ohio team spoke and his message was on James 1:27, and one of his main points was that we are called to serve others, but more importantly we are called to serve God. We are supposed to love others, but we are called to love God first. He used an excellent illustration that explained that we are supposed to love Jesus so much that our love for him is overflowing, and with that overflowing love for Jesus we are able to love those around us. I think that hit me pretty hard because it has been something that seems to keep coming up this last 6 months, is the idea of putting God first. It is easy to come over here and do do do. There are so many ways to serve and so many people to help. And all of that is great, but if my focus is on people and I lose my focus on God I'm missing the whole point. Most important is my relationship with, the time I spend with, and my love for God, and the overflowing love I have I am able to use to serve those around me. The service means so much more when it is done because of the love I have for God, rather than just because I may be a nice person, or I like to teach, or whatever it may be. So I work at everything I do with all my heart, putting God first and using my love for him and the love he has given me to be able to serve people out of that same love.
Prayer Requests:
Please continue to pray for the people of Manila. There is so much going on there and a lot of tough situations for so many people. It is the most densely populated city in the world and when half the city is out of homes in shelters and wherever they can find, it makes it even more intense. Disease can be even more harmful than the flooding was with everyone so densely populated and the standing water everywhere.
I haven't gotten much more news about the Muslim students I wrote about in my last post, but please continue to pray for them and having to deal with the loss of their mothers, as well as for the mourning of the community for such a shocking and terrible thing to happen.
Please pray for Gemima, the girl from the Ati village. She has a broken femur and has spent almost a month in the hospital and now at home stuck in a cast and not able to walk around or anything. I believe she is 10 years old, so that is not a fun situation to be in. Please pray for healing and that the injury wont cause any damage to her bones still growing and that it wouldn't create any permanent damage.
I would also like to ask for prayer for the missionaries here. Almost all of us have a parent, family member, or close friend back home who is going through cancer, in the hospital, or in other similar situations. It is hard being over here when you want to be there for people back home as well. Pray for the strength of being able to focus on what we are doing here when it is so easy to be dragged down by the tough things going on. Please pray for all the family members and friends and their health in the things that they are going through.
Thank you so much for your love and support, and all of your prayer. It makes such a difference to me and to everyone here.
