We are here in Manila, Philippines! Made it safe and sound 🙂 We travelled from Rwanda to Uganda to Qatar to Thailand to the Philippines. It took 51 hours of travel, with a 24 hour layover in Bangkok and a half hour layover in Doha. Our layover in Bangkok was probably the most fun I’ve ever had in an airport. There were about 6 of us that stayed up the entire night and played sardines (a form of hide and go seek) throughout the entire airport, washed our hair in the sinks and had a little makeover with the free beauty product samples, had a workout routine going the opposite ways on the escalators, had AMAZING Thai food (seriously amazing), had STARBUCKS COFFEE and great talks with the core 6 and the few in and outers that couldn’t sleep throughout the night.
When we arrived in Manila it was raining, apparently we’ve made it to another country in their rainy season. We are going to be in the Philippines for a month and a half, not really sure why, but I am very excited for it. This country/ministry contact is known to be a favorite for lots of racers and I can definitely see why. We are working with Kids International Ministries, living with 4 teams, working with orphans, prostitutes, abused children, street kids, assisting births (mostly of abused 15 year olds and young children not meant to be pregnant), building houses for families and community events. Our ministry is so different than in Africa, but it is very refreshing. In Africa we mainly helped with church services and helped with teaching English, Bible studies and some other extra things. Here we have tons of options to help with and the freedom to help with whatever the Lord is calling us to and has gifted us in. Right away I felt called to help at the Jazz House with Josie’s Angels. Josie is our ministry contacts daughter and is 24 years old. A few years ago she felt called to work with the younger girls in the area and started a Bible study. She started doing house visits and analyzing their home life and found that most of them were being abused physically and sexually and she knew she had to do something. Her father encouraged her to make a group home for them and if she felt called to do so he would help her get the funds and resources. She went to Australia to think it over (their family members are constantly traveling the world) and the Lord turned her feer into a passion and desire. So, she came home, found a house and in July of this past year she opened the Jazz House and there are 25 kids (ages 9-17) living there. The house is technically a dormitory, so the kids have to go home every Saturday, but they are safe throughout the week and are getting filled by Josie and the other women helping out. Every day I am going to be there building into the lives of these kids and really trying to build into a few in particular so I can get deep with them and really get to know them.
Also, every Monday and Tuesday Josie still leads the Bible study at the church next door. I went yesterday and it was amazing. There were about 100 little Philippino girls that just loved on us and were the cutest little things I’d ever seen. I had so much fun! We introduced ourselves when we first got there by telling them our name, age and favorite color and apparently purple was the hot color of the night, because the grils all went crazy when I told them it was my favorite. The whole night they were coming up to me screaming “YOU LIKE PURPLE!” and giving me huge hugs and by the end of the night I was known as “the purple girl” haha.
A bit about our house… as I said before we are living with 4 teams, our first time living with boys, oooh! There are 2 huge houses that we are staying in and share with other ministries that come in and out to help out as well. Right now there is a middle school group from Hong Kong that we have gotten to know and a group from Korea that had just left. There are Philippino families that live here and make our food for us and boy do they feed us well!! We actually get eggs, pancakes, toast and fruit for breakfast (my FAVORITE meal of the day), amazing lunches and dinners with desserts for both meals 🙂 We have a coffee pot filled with coffee 24/7, with all the fixins. Josie is a cosmetologist and has trained some Philippino women to do massages, cut hair, do manicures/pedicures, facials, hair dye and the like. So, there is a spa where we can get these services done for less than $5 and if feeds their families for a week. Next to the spa is a gym we have access to 24/7 with some good equipment and some moderately hilarious stuff (i.e. the machine from the 70s that has a band you place around your waist and it vibrates your fat away? Or is supposed to do something like that?). There is a huge dining room that could seat 75+ people with all sorts of games and a piano, a 3 huge living rooms with big couches and chairs, an outside seating area with palm trees overhead and little lanterns strung throughout, a basketball court, laundry room with washing machines and dryers (OH how I’ve missed these guys) and just so much. There is awesome street food all along the road, our church is right next door and there is cheap transportation. There are Trikes or something like that that is a motorcycle with a cage kind of thing around it that can sit about 6 people in it and costs 6 pesos (40 pesos = $1) and Jeepnees that are like extended jeeps with bench seats in the back that can seat about 20 people and is also 8 pesos. There is a McDonalds, that delivers haha, right down the road from us, Starbucks, Forever 21, Aldo and all sorts of great stores with pretty cheap prices. The Philippines would be an amazing place to live, I could definitely see myself coming back here again.
We start ministry at the Jazz house next week, but yesterday some girls and I went there to set up a trampoline that some people had donated and tomorrow Kelly, Lacee and I are going to spend the night there and be the ‘house moms’ since the caretaker took a week off. Later today our team is helping with construcion, which basically is just moving a huge mound of dirt right now, so we can pour the cement for the first floor. We are doing a community feeding tomorrow and going to see the street kids and prostitutes and just love them and feed them.
I hope all is well with you guys! Sorry I hadn’t blogged for a week or so, I’ve been a little addicted to learning my ukelele now that I actually found strings and a tuner in the Philippines. I’m part of the worship band here and I think we are going to be leading a staff worhsip, helping out on Sundays and playing for some of the kids. So, I have lots of practise to do before I will be as good as the people I’ll be playing with, but so far I’ve learned lots of old hymns from a book I bought and a few new ones and I’ve memorized Someone Like You from Adele.
Alright, all for now. Love you guys 🙂
