After a long trip to the East Manila ER last night and a new
round of antibiotics, I woke up feeling much better, and have progressively
felt even better as the day has gone by. This morning Adam and I loaded up 2
trucks with food, and then went to a cracker factory to pick up 19 boxes of
donated crackers. We then loaded up the rest of our teams, and headed to a
refugee camp about 45 minutes outside of the city. The camp, which is home for
thousands of people who lost everything they had in the typhoon that hit one
year ago this Sunday, consists of hundreds of white tents donated by the
Canadian Red Cross, a well dug by UNICEF, mini-moats holding stagnant waste,
constant trash fires, and a smell that took a few minutes to stomach. Next to
the camp are hundreds of houses built/being built, all vacant. The displaced
will one day move in to these, I assume. As soon as we arrived we were
bombarded with crowds of children and parents, desperate… and starving. We
carried the bags of food to their respective places, and then set up under a
canopy serving (for lack of a better word) mush, which the ladies had prepared,
and water to the hundreds of people. I met Addie, a pastor who is living nearby
and is hoping to plant a church in the camp soon. He was a genuinely nice guy,
and I’ve got a lot of respect for someone who sees a place as stricken as this
as the place he wants to be! I then
met Imelde (a-mel-duh), a 40-year old woman who has been living in the refugee
camp for the last 5 months with her husband, Levi, and 3 children, including her beautiful daughter, Alexa (in the pic). Imelde runs
a vegetable stand where she sells fresh produce she grows in her garden right
across from her shop. She explained all the local produce to me, and then took
me around her garden and showed me how it all grows. I asked her where she
lives and she said, “here.� In the back of her shop is a slanted mud floor with
2 pallets to sleep on. That’s it. She summarized the entire scene as she said
plainly, “This is no home.�
I learned an invaluable lesson today. When taken at face
value, this scene, which will be reproduced in 10 more countries over the next
10 months, leaves one feeling depressed, hopeless and saddened. But after
meeting Addie, and hearing how he is choosing to let God work through this
disaster, and after meeting Imelde, and getting to spend just 45 minutes
talking about gardening and vegetables with her, hearing her story and sensing
the hope that radiates from her smile,I can’t help but walk away from that
scene with a renewed spirit of joy and hope. God is bigger than
disaster. He’s bigger than injustice, and He is much bigger than you or I, and
it is obvious in the faces of those who love Him like Addie and Imelde. Praise
be to God for his unfailing love.
