We finally made it to our ministry location for the month! We are located in Malaybalay, a city on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. We arrived here on Tuesday, September 13 at 6:00AM after waking up at 1:00 am to get to the airport in Manila. As soon as we got off the plane, we had a huge surprise and got to go on our first big adventure. We went white water rafting on the ______ de Oro (I can’t remember the name) river. It just worked out logistically to go white water rafting before we traveled to our ministry location because the river was right next to the airport.
White water rafting was a blast! We stayed in our teams of 6 and we each had a raft and two guides with us. The guides liked to play tricks on us like telling us that the big alligator that they found last month was from this river (it is true that they found the biggest alligator in the world on the island of Mindanao last month, but it was not from this river), and they told us that there were all sorts of snakes and stuff. We got to stand up through a few of the rapids and we even got to go cliff jumping in one of the deep parts of the river.
We got to our ministry location in the afternoon on Tuesday. We are working at the “Faith Family Children’s Home” in Malaybalay. This home is an orphanage run by Kids International Ministries and has only been running for a few years. There are approximately 14 older boys, 4 older girls and 9 infants/toddlers in this orphanage. We are working with the orphanage and spending time with the kids here.
We are spending time in the infant/toddler room 24/7. We split the day into shifts and there are always two of us working with these 9 youngsters. Whew, it is quite a job to take care of 9 kids under the age of 3. I have spent all of my time with the infants/toddlers because it is such a big job and I am finally getting the hang of what their schedule is and what kind of things they need (obviously I don’t have much experience taking care of young kids, so it has taken me a while to even begin to know what to do with them).
I have had a lot of fun in the toddler room. The kids are adorable and it didn’t take any time at all for them to warm up to us being there. They jump right in your lap and want you to play with them. We play in the sandbox a lot and read a lot of books. We are there for nap time and sleep time and help them with all of their daily needs. The five oldest kids share a room, so nap time is pretty non-existent because they spend the whole time in their room giggling and playing games.
Through us being here, the people who normally run the orphanage get a little bit of a break and can have some time to themselves. I am amazed to watch how the people who normally run the orphanage work. They literally have dedicated their lives to being here and helping the kids. There is one baby that has cerebral palsy and one of the nursery workers is with him all day and all night; she sleeps on the floor in the playroom with him so that he is comfortable at night. Many of the people who work here live 3 to 5 hours away and only travel home on their one day off per week. It has been very humbling to watch how dedicated they are to caring for these kids.
LOGISTICAL UPDATE:
We have very limited internet access where we are, and there is a 12 hour time difference which makes it hard to ever be able to skype with anyone. If anyone wants to chat or skype, I will do my best to get to a computer between the hours of 8-11pm EST. It might not ever work out and I cannot promise any definite dates that I will be able to be online. It seems that the electricity and internet stop working very frequently here.
Important news for next month:
Just a heads up that we will not have any internet accessibility in our next country. Also, many of you know what our next country is, but please do not post anything on the internet about us being in that country. This is for the protection of the ministry contacts that we will be working with in this country, so that they are not discovered and disbanded by the government. Please, if you refer to this country on Chris’ or my facebook page, just call it the “closed country” or something like that.
