(Catch up notice: I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth! Rather, ministry has been full and internet connection limited. The next few blogs will be about the month of January in the Philippines though we are currently in Thailand for February.)
The water reservoir behind the home.
I never realized how much I take clean water for granted. After this January, I hope I never take it for granted again.
We served at a children’s home in Malaybalay, a small town on a southern island of the Philippines, Mindano. We all took shifts working in the home, as well as planting grass for a soccer field. In respect for the kids and their potential adoption in the future, I can’t post pictures and names of the children we worked with (at least recognizable pictures), but I can share what God taught me there.
The home is quite nice, a two-story cement building overlooking the soccer field (that has taken about two years to have any form of green stuff growing on it). The toddlers (2 babies, 4 toddlers) have a room down stairs. A grand center staircase splits to rooms on the upper level, boys on the right, girls on the left.
Bunk beds are the best way to pack as many bodies into a room, and each child has a bed with clean sheets, a pillow and blanket. There are also bathrooms for each room, but I can count on one hand the number of times we could actually use the bathrooms with running water. A dumpster size plastic container was in each bathroom to take the place of “toilet paper” as well as emergency bucket baths.
Less than a hundred yards away, five of our WR teams were housed on the property. By week two our ears were trained to hear the gunning of the water truck engine coming to fill our reservoir as well as the children’s home. Toilets, showers, hand washing – none of it was a right this month. A gift.
When having “boys duty” or “girls duty,” we were the shepherds for getting the “flock” of giggling kids to eat dinner, do their chores, and get showers. Instead of the kitchen sink, dishes went out back to the mighty concrete reservoir. And then the kids lined up for bucket baths of freezing water, dancing in their “slippers” (flip-flops) and skivvies with smiles to their ears. It was pretty humorous. But they had the reservoir bath down to a science. Just good, clean fun.
Later, they’d be back to fill a bucket to mop the floor. The house-moms and cooks would use the reservoir for cooking and cleaning. The reservoir was essential to life.
One morning as I made laps around the soccer field praying, God reminded me that He is my reservoir. The image of the kids rushing to the spigots of the great tank of water for life was exactly how I needed to come to God – hungry, thirsty, needing to be cleaned and filled… only to be poured out again.
- To hold screaming toddlers going through separation anxiety.
- To step in feces (gasp) that inadvertently falls from a diaper and keep going with a smile.
- To heave-ho chunks of dirt for sod planting.
- To “push, Ate, push!” for the thousandth time.
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Philippians 2:13
Praise be to God, our mighty reservoir.
