Once again I said goodbye to the States…
…and after 3 flights and 24 hours of travel, I made it to the Philippines!!! I was greeted with the best welcome at the airport I’ve ever received, balloons and all (thanks to Raquel and Andie)!
Since the first week of September was the Parent Vision Trip for our squad (a week when parents get to visit their Racers on the field and experience a week of ministry with them) I joined Team Koinonia for the week at Christ Power and Grace church, where they will be serving for the month. We lived on the second floor of the church, which is located in the heart of a slum community in Manila. After being in the States for a month, I thought the first couple of days back to a hot climate with no AC, cold showers and sleeping underneath a mosquito net on the floor might be a tough transition, but I’m so grateful that it actually felt like I never left the Race.
The view of the slum community where the church is located.
From the top left, our view from the second floor, our sleeping arrangements, and on the right, the front of the church.
My first day there I got to help teach a class for the preschoolers that the church offers children in the surrounding area. I got to go through a book on the ABC’s with them, but I mostly helped with “crowd control”. Apparently kids this age do not like to sit still!
The next day we got to visit a neighboring slum community called Aroma and help with a village feeding program. After arriving, we walked down a few of the streets inviting the children to the church where we’d be doing the feeding. Within about 10 minutes, we had a line of kids with their bowls in hand, waiting for us at the church. Each child received a full bowl of chicken soup and half of a hard-boiled egg to eat. The children left with full tummies and we left with full hearts.
The slum community, Aroma.
The next day we visited a hospital in Manila, where we were able to pray for families and kids in the children’s wing. We spent a couple of hours just in one room, going around speaking with the families and praying over their children that they would be healed. The very first boy we visited had Kawasaki disease, and his grandmother told us that just that morning she was praying for a group of people to visit the hospital who could pray over her grandson. Times like this it still amazes me that God could use me to be the answer to someone’s prayer. In this one room we visited there were about 10 children with a wide range of ages and diseases. We prayed over a 17-day old infant with heart disease and a 14-year old boy who had been in the hospital for 2-years battling leukemia. Having the opportunity to pray over a child and to see the impact it has on their families is a truly humbling experience. I prayed over one little girl who was malnourished and her grandmother was crying as I finished. I may never now if that little girl was healed that day, but I do know that I was able to bring hope to a family that she would be.
After that first week, I was reunited with my team, The Golden Girls! For the remainder of this month, we are staying at a hostel in Manila and serving as the Unsung Heroes team for our squad. Just as my previous team, Team Adelphoi, did in Costa Rica, this month we are searching for new ministry contacts that future WR teams will have the potential to serve with. Last week mainly consisted of doing research on Christian ministries here in Manila and this week is filled with meetings we’ve set up with these contacts. So far we’ve already met some great ministries, so I’m super excited about what God has in store for us the rest of this month.
The view from our hostel in Manila.
