The Philippines is packed with people. When we make eye contact with the Filipino’s they usually wave, practice their already fluent English and then giggle. They treat us as if they had been awaiting our arrival. The streets are always full, and the public transportation is just plain fun. The locals whip around on motorcycles and their bus’s look like a train car on wheels. It took our bus over two hours to travel fifteen miles from the airport to Children’s Garden.
Children’s Garden is the ministry that we are involved with this month. We are living at the Children’s Home with around twenty boys who have been rescued from the chaotic streets of the monstrous city of Manila. Most of the boys were involved in huffing glue “rugby” and various other drugs from a young age.
As we were getting settled in to our new home for the month we had the opportunity to hear a couple of the boys stories. They highly value sharing their testimonies. Many of the stories are very similar; drugs, broken families and stealing in the city to make money for food and drugs. After these common themes I couldn’t help but wonder how the kids could be so respectful and intelligent after abusing drugs at such a young age. Not long after these thoughts I was destroyed in chess by a couple of boys a decade younger than myself. So much for brain damage.
Their social and educational intelligence has come from lots of hard work on the boys part and on the part of the staff who have chosen to love them from the very beginning. These boys gain the trust of the staff and eventually listen to the gospel. They are faithful and insightful. The most beautiful part of the ministry is to see these boys give back to the community in what they call “outreach.” At outreach each week we worship and provide food and Christmas gifts to kids in need. Each outreach consists of around 100 kids. We have also done outreach at a number of different prisons in the community as well.
Something I’m beginning to learn on the race is how easy it is to adapt. We arrive in a new country each month and I’m taken aback. I take in the new people and transportation and cultural differences. Then next thing I know I have adapted. Something so different and unnatural is just normal. It’s normal to be sleeping in a single room with 9 grown men and a small rotating fan overhead. I’m pretty comfortable in the bunk bed that squeaks every time I even think about blinking, and I barely notice when the toilet doesn’t have a seat on it anymore.
Now the real trick is adapting to the way God has called us to live. To constantly set our minds on things above and not on earthly things. To let our identity be in Christ and not what we want everyone else around us to see. To be the person he created us to be in that moment rather than adapting to who others want us to be. To feel for people around us who are in need and not turn our back on them, in fear that it might mess up our plans for the day.
So if I adapt easily to what is around me then why do I adapt to darkness and hope to shine light through it? I’m learning that to shine his light I have to be a part of the light that’s already around me, to be involved with what He is already doing. If I hope to represent him alone, under my own standards, then I realize I’m truly trying to bring myself glory and not my Creator.
These boys at Children’s Garden have been rescued by God’s plan for their lives from the beginning. And they have bought into his plan and give back to others, by sharing their stories and reaching out in ways that others reached out to them when they were in need. It’s a pretty cool cycle that never stops giving and receiving. It’s all part of his plan and it’s up to us if we want to be a part of it.
