Christmas is a huge celebration in the Philippines. If you think that Americans love Christmas you should probably visit the Philippines. Since they don’t have an American Thanksgiving, Christmas preparations begin as early as the end of September.
As you can probably imagine, there is a lot of poverty in the rural areas of the Philippines. We have seen a lot of poor people in desperate need for even their most basic needs in the outskirts of Malaybalay City. After the latest typhoon (Pablo) blew through, many people were left with damaged homes and even less than what they started with.
When Pastor Jojo asked if we would consider helping him provide Christmas gifts for some of the children in his ministry, God laid it on my heart to give people the opportunity to help at home. I promptly found internet after leaving his house and updated my Facebook status asking for money for these wonderful kids.
Two families agreed to give $100 each (Pastor Jojo only asked for $100). I withdrew the money from the ATM and brought it to Pastor Jojo the next time I saw him. I explained how I got the money and made sure he knew it was coming from people back in America. He was blown away. He couldn’t believe it. He felt so humbled. It was awesome to see his reaction to the fact that people in America care about his people.
I wasn’t sure what he’d do with the money. He had planned on giving out the Christmas gifts on the 26th of December, the day we were planning on leaving early in the morning. I asked him to send me pictures of the kids receiving their gifts.
He did me one better! He told me the following day that he had to move the gift giving to the Saturday before we were to leave. I was so excited – excited to see these gifts, and even more excited to see how the kids would react to the gift.
Yesterday we picked Pastor Jojo up, loaded up the presents and headed out. I was pleased to see that he had been very thrifty with the money. Each bag had several things in it: toothbrush & toothpaste, truck, soap, otter pop type thing, candy, crackers, and some other fun and practical stuff.
We got to our first stop and handed out the gifts. We made sure to tell them that the gifts weren’t from us. We made sure to tell them that people in America were thinking about them and praying for them. We made sure to tell them that Jesus loves them.
We made many more stops that day. We got to see a hundred more thrilled beyond belief children. We got to see the joy of Christ. We got to see kids listen to the Christmas story, maybe some for the first time.
