Totally meant to post this a week and a half ago, but am just getting around to it so I’ll post it tonight with a different day so there is no confusion. 😀 …..
We have two days left in The Philippines… wow! It went by so fast; we just got here and now we’re getting ready to leave. The boys are currently here, at camp New Beginnings. Tomorrow we have to take them back to the city and I know I’m probably going to cry. They’re all so amazingly precious and I hate the thought of them returning to that environment. One of the boys, Matthew, spent the whole morning this morning teaching me words in his language. Simple words: eyes, ears, “how are you,” “I’m hungry,” hands, feet, tall, short, stand up, sit down, etc. Its been such a blessing to spend time with them; to play soccer with them, to eat next to them, to hug them and tell them we love them. Initially when we first met them two weeks ago I wasn’t quite sure what loving them meant…with their lice covered heads and their completely filthy bodes, but God has shown me what it means to love them. He’s comforted my fears and told us that it’s okay to be close to them, he will protect us for our fears.
I can’t imagine taking them back tomorrow and never seeing them again. I know that this is how it goes with the people we come into contact with; we come into their lives and them leave, probably never to return, but I already know I am not looking forward to it. I pray God gives us the strength and comfort that we’re so desperately going to need. I imagine they’re just going to scatter when we get back to the city; busy doing whatever it is that they do to occupy themselves throughout the day. Our host says they mainly beg, but some of them are pocket pickers or in a gang. I pray watching them leave is something my heart can handle.
I am going to miss our ministry. New Beginnings camp is such an amazing place and they are impacting this community in so many different ways; I am sad to walk away from such a blessing. I know that God is working here; his presence is evident and the people here are filled with the Holy Spirit. They have been so good to us. Their kindness, love and generosity is going to be something that I am going to miss. The boys that live with our host and work the campground are SO well behaved and sweet; I can only pray my kids are so well behaved and wonderful in their teenage years.
Our host and his wife are amazingly kind and funny; it’ll be sad when we don’t get to see them every morning in the kitchen. But I am excited to take the responsibility God has given us of keeping these people in our prayers; praying for their lives and ministry. God has given us a beautiful task of loving them from afar and I can’t wait to be able to work in that. Thank goodness for facebook (definitely the only time you’ll ever hear me say that).
They told us today where our next ministry is going to be. We’re in a large city in Thailand, called Chang Mai, and we’ll be with the whole squad. All 53 of us will be in one place. I know when we have travel days and we’re all traveling together it’s impactful to the communities we go through; we’re like a swarm of loci. We take over everything and although we try to keep to ourselves, not take up too much space or be too loud it’s hard because there are so many of us and American’s are naturally loud compared to the rest of the world. So, people stare and we draw attention on travel days.
That’s just travel days….It’ll be interesting to see how all of us impact in Chang Mai. The blessing is that we’re not the first squad to be there, so they’ll be used to having such large amounts of American groups coming (I hope). I am excited though. There is so much we can do on our days off and so many things there to see. I can’t wait to learn more about our ministry. They told us we’re working with an organization called Lighthouse Ministries. They work with street children, prostitutes and have out reach programs. I’m pumped about all three of those!! We’ll see where we end up!!!
Thanks for reading,
Tabbi
