It’s been so long! I’ve started and never finished about four blogs before this one.
It’s been hard to put life, especially this life so saturated in the Lord, into written words.
But the truth is, my soul has stories to tell and I know for a fact that God wants me to share them, so I’m getting over myself and forcing myself to sit down and type until I’ve captured even the littlest bit of the glory that is happening within this community right now.
I’ll start with a breif logistical sort of update:
What on this earth am I doing now?!?!?
Philippines! I’m in the Philippines, I’ve been here since March 8th.
I, along with my team of 6 other powerful women of God (I can’t talk about them and speak in any way except for with the highest honor and respect honestly), our “sister team” of three girls, and our team leader are out here in Manila, Philippines living at the Kids International Ministry campus and working alongside them in their simple, yet profoundly life changing mission to love, teach, and serve the Filipino people.
For the first couple of days I kept repeating to myself, I think I missed this place. I think I really, really missed this place. (For those of you who do not know, I’ve been here twice on two weeks mission trips with my youth group; I always left wanting to of stayed longer, to of made more of an impact, to be closer to the people that I met for just a few short days- I wanted deeper and longer and that’s exactly what the Lord has given me here now for these three months! Hallelujah!)
There are a lot of beautiful and powerful things to say about every nation under the sun, but the Philippines is special. There’s a warmth- yes, literally speaking, it’s all kinds of hot and humid around here, but there is this warmth emanating from the people that live here. They are kind and welcoming beyond words. Smiling through their storms, so much so that when you pass by any street or alley, all you’ll see is warm smiles, and for a moment I feel
that there must be something right about it here…that the world isn’t as complicated or overwhelming as it seems, that it’s just good and it’s just nice to be alive. Something sweet is in the air. Maybe it’s just me, I just feel it and see it and breath it in. (I simultaneously feel the tremendous weight of the thriving monster of a sex trafficking industry that the Philippines has in its back yard along with horrifying abuse, corruption, and poverty which is only fed by the grip drugs and alcohol have on its neck. But even still. When I see those smiles, from children to nanay’s (grandmas), it all seems to fade for the tiniest, holiest moment.)
Kids International Ministry (KIM) is fighting its good fight, with the help of many volunteers from all over the globe, by all sorts of community outreach. You can volunteer at their Children’s Home where they’re rescuing children who’ve been neglected, abused, left behind, and/or lost in markets on the daily with some of the most incredible social workers this world has to offer or you can walk a couple streets over to the Hope Alive birthing clinic where KIM offers women in the community who cannot afford to pay for the medical care they need to have a healthy pregnancy a 100% free of any cost pregnancy along with weekly check-ups and classes on how to care for your child best. Not to mention, a woman named Ellen leads a bible study for the mothers in the waiting room prior to their Tuesday-Thursday appointments where she is devoted to redefining their sense of love, value, identity, purpose, and ultimately God in order to give these mothers to be a firm foundation to build not only their own life on but also her little one’s life. A beautiful thing! Volunteering at the clinic looks like anything from helping the nurses with filing and organizing to taking women’s heart rates, pulses, weight, and check for the heartbeat (one of the most moving sounds my ears have ever heard in all my life; something about it makes me want to cry every time) all the way to assisting the local midwives’ in a live birth! A wild experience, let me tell you! Overwhelming in beauty. A phenomenon that I will never be able to put into words. There’s so much more to this ministry though, there’s always construction to be done- KIM finds families in the communities it enters that are in need of safe, strong homes and builds them from the floor to the ceiling, there’s jail ministry where you can go to local prisons and bring light to the darkness and hope to the hopeless, there’s sports ministry where you can do anything from an organized basketball tournament where you share the gospel at half time to something less structured or planned out like street games or inviting the street kids to the swimming pool out back. As for sports ministry, the hope is simply that children will remember the times when they were looked at in the eyes, treated with respect, loved with sincerity, completely safe, and overcome with the simple joy of having fun and that in their memories they’ll be brought to God. As for the swimming pool, that thing is a sanctuary of sorts! A sanctuary of joy, an oasis and haven for hundreds of little ones who face lives often of hardships of many kinds. A place where we’re washed and we’re happy and we’re together in it all! But that’s not all KIM does! They also started a school called Cuatro Christian Academy back in 2006 because they saw the insane need that the community just outside of this campus’ gates has for education. One of KIM’s goals is to break the cycle of poverty and they came to the conclusion that one of the best ways to do that is by starting with the youth. Something about this “neighborhood” or city or village or whatever it is that you’d like to call this place is that almost every single family living here can barely afford to get food on the table and clothes on everyone’s backs and gas in the moto for getting to work, let alone pay for school- and forget about electricity or running water- honestly, forget about running water, just any form clean water, even bottled! With the realities of these families’ lives right before KIM’s eyes, they saw the need for quality education. This poverty will only continue on and on and on until the end of time unless there is someone who can give these children the education and capabilities needed to make a decent enough wage to raise above it all!! So, they made a tuition free school for children who could not otherwise attend a school, and volunteers can come as either full-time teachers or temporary tutors for the children. The impact of KIM is insane and beautiful and ALL I CAN DO IS PRAISE GOD FOR THIS MINISTRY, but that’s not all that KIM does. My personal favorite of all of their ministries is their feedings which incorporate medical missions as well.
It’s hard to put into words the morning and afternoon feedings we go to every single week day. Feedings look like this: local women are hired to cook pounds upon pounds of porridge- this porridge is heavy on protein and nutrients so that the children that come to these feedings get as full as possible and so that it stays with them for as long as possible because we have no way of knowing when there next meal will be. It takes two hours to fully prepare the food for the 9 am feeding and the 4 pm feeding, so these women are in the kitchen (at the school that happens to be KIM’s neighbor) and chopping and peeling and boiling and mixing by 7 am sharp, just in time to see the sky fully lit up from the sunrise and hear the city come alive with roosters and honking of jeepneys and trikes zooming through the streets. When it’s all ready, they pour their vats of porridge into massive plastic storage containers and place two scoops on top of their lids, sitting pretty for us to haul into the back of one of the rickety old cars that we cram as many people as possible into and we head off!
Feedings are all over the island! They are from right outside the gate to three hours away. These communities have been found and chosen over the years because of things from evident need for something as simple as one meal a week to a fire that burned down their entire community to a typhoon that killed and demolished hundreds of their neighbors and friends. It all boils down to this: they need food and KIM is trying its hardest to provide for them. While there are physical needs in all of these places, there is another kind of malnutrition, another kind of hunger, one that I believe is much greater in power: the famished souls living inside each of these people. Isn’t that what’s eating at every single person in every single continent, nation, country, city, home on this planet?!? Isn’t that what’s eating us alive?! KIM recognizes this deeper hunger and meets the more recognizable, more familiar hunger of the flesh and then meets the other intrinsic hunger by fun teachings, songs, and games that are purposeful in meaning and always point back to the Lord that the children can hear and sing along to and laugh and play to! Oh, it’s dripping in holiness! It’s drowning in something bigger than I can see! It’s sweet like nothing else. Showing them the care of the Lord by filling them up as much as possible, in every way as possible.
I pray that they can think back on these days and feedings and say, “God, I feel so seen by You and I feel so cared by You.” I hope they can feel that “peace that surpasses all understanding” (philippians 4:7) and “know that love that surpasses all knowledge” (ephesians 3:19).
As I said earlier, it’s hard to put these feedings into words.
Especially the ones where you are pulled into alleyways by a little nine year old, long brown silky haired girl who couldn’t manage to hold her and her little sister’s hot porridge we had just served out of the back of the open trunk of one of the ministry’s old, beat up cars along with the baby milk and eggs that Rhona (one of the wonderwomen who works with KIM when she’s not too busy with her presidentail duties [she was voted PRESIDENT of the Cuatro community by the people last year] or not catching babies at the clinic as she’s one of the only midwifes around or busy taking care of her 13 year old son, goes on many of the feedings to help specifically with any medical needs she sees as we’re feeding the children) gave to her. Right before I began following this little one past the open trunk with a swarm of children crowding around with containers of all shapes and sizes in hand for their “libre lugaw” (free porridge), Rhona looked at me and said “Jollibee (my name happens to sound very similar to the most popular food chain around, Jollibee, so I’ve learned to respond to Jollibee over the past five weeks here), help this little girl hold those eggs and this baby’s milk! We give her extra food to help her take care of her five siblings. She takes care of them because her mother and father are both gone for work and visiting family. Hurry! She needs your help, just follow- she’ll bring you to her house!” I barely had time to blink as Rhona so hurriedly explained something so wrong and overwhelming. I didn’t have time to try to understand anything or question anything or do anything but follow her as the eggs and milk were shoved into my chest and the little girl holding the steaming porridge in both hands with a tiny, dirty little girl, her sister, clutched onto the back of her tank top that must’ve been a woman’s because it was drooping over her shoulder and engulfing her little frame.
I followed her down the familiar dirt street lined with vendors of all kinds, sitting at their stands draped in snacks and cleaning supplies and shirts and anything you can think of honestly. We passed the familiar mixture of people everywhere and mangy dogs and cats chasing after trash floating in the murky water that has fallen in little trenches lining the edges of the roads. We passed by the parked trikes and bikes and an occasional home. I just followed that brown, silky hair. Until we turned left. It looked like we were headed into the front of a shop and maybe she lived above it or in the back of it, but no- we were squeezing in between the store and the next concrete/wood/tarp building not three feet away from it. All of the sudden I was in an alley bursting with just as much life as the streets! Children followed us and danced and jumped through the narrow path the brown haired nine year old was guiding me through. A maze of miss-matched houses stacked four stories high, thin and remarkably standing strong even though they seemed flimsy and aged! Rich and complex, just like the Philippines. We walked no more than two minutes further when she began climbing up a steep, make-shift latter/stair case, porridge still in hand. I followed and helped her place the boxes of eggs and milk onto the floor of the home that she, at the age of nine, was running single-handedly. Her other siblings popped their heads up out of no-where and smiled their big smiles, I couldn’t help but smile back and say “Hello!” when one of the boys, still smiling, lifted up his shirt. I was shocked at what I saw. Severe, open blisters from some kind of burn painted his belly from his chest to bellow his pants.
After seeing his stomach was covered in open sores, I immediately took him back to the open trunk where the food was still being served, to where our first aid kit was. I asked him what his name was and he said Arthur. As we were walking I asked him how his tummy got like that. All he said was, “Hot water. Water on me.”
GOSH! I was screaming inside!!!! These children weren’t made to take care of themselves. They can’t do it on their own. They can’t continue boiling their own water and spilling it all over their chests down to their underwear! They need someone to help them, to guide them, to care for them, to mother and father them!
As I was imploding, I had to smile- Arthur deserved genuine love and gentle care, even for just these next couple of moments. So, we finally got to the car and we cleaned everything. Rhona guided me through what alcohols and creams and bandages to use as I winced, but tried to stay calm for Arthur’s sake. The least I could do was bring him peace. I told myself I’d scream and cry later, that now was not the time.
As usual, children flock any time they notice any American doing just about anything, so before I knew it little Arthur and I were surrounded, shoved against the car with just enough room to gently finish rubbing his wounds. After he was taken care of medically, I looked around at all of his friends gathered together and saw it as a teaching moment. I already had planned to pray over Arthur, but I wanted these kids to know that their prayers are powerful and meaningful too. I asked Rhona if she could translate my words. I began to explain to the children that we believe in a God that is so, absolutely powerful and strong that He can heal anyone or anything and that He tells us to be strong and courageous- to not be afraid or discouraged- because He’ll be with us for all of the days of our lives (Joshua 1:9)…together Rhona and I explained that anyone can talk to God at any time, that you don’t have to say anything special, you can just talk to Him like a friend and He’ll listen to us and love us like family.
As I was finished explaining prayer to them, I let them all come just a little closer to me and Arthur (not that they could have physically come much closer at all, they were already inches away from us) and I told them that we were all about to pray together for him to get healed. I told them that they could all lay hands on little Arthur or me and we would all say anything we wanted to to God. I began praying my simple prayer, a prayer asking God to heal this little one’s skin all the way, for all pain to leave him, and for him to know and feel that he is loved- truly loved- all in the powerful name of Jesus Christ.
Amen!
After I said amen, the little hands lifted off of the two of us and I looked around and tried to soak every single thing about what had just happened in. As much as my forgetful brain would allow, I tried so hard to mentally capture it all- the togetherness, the purity, the sweetness that just occurred. This is what I live for!
For love. For healing. For unity.
It’s been two weeks since that afternoon and last Tuesday Rhona came back from the feeding and said that little Arthur came running up to her, smiling his big smile, lifted up his shirt and NOTHING was there! Rhona told me that she could barely tell anything was there at all, that the skin was healed completely and that he was in no pain at all.
ANSWERED PRAYER!! A MIRACLE! HALLELUJAH! GOD, YOU ARE TOO GOOD TO US!
There’s so much to that portion of the afternoon alone. I’m living day after day of stories like this. Of prayers and answers and love like you can see from that Tuesday afternoon in Junction city two going on three weeks ago. I think if I wrote anything else tonight it’d get so lengthy none of you would read it, so I’ll save other stories for other times!
This is what I mean when I say it’s been hard for me to put these things into writing…Of course it would be much easier to just sit before every single one of you and talk for hours about what I’ve seen and heard. It’d be easier, but that’s not how it is. This requires much more processing and introspection. It drains me mentally and spiritually to sit before a blank screen and begin typing about this richly saturated life- this beautiful canvas that’s covered in strokes of many colors and designs- I’m living at the moment. It’s dripping in Holiness. It’s draining and it’s worth it and it keeps me up at night and it’s all I’ve ever wanted and it’s horrifying and it’s beautiful.
It is. It just is.
You deserve to be let into it and I’ve failed at beckoning you into it all. My apologies to you, my supporters, the ones that I love and the ones that love me. I hope you feel a bit more let in. Because if I’m moved by all of this I know you can be moved too. And God wants us all to feel! He made us to live with feeling. I just hope you all have been brought even a bit closer to this journey that you’re loving me through day by day from back home. You deserve to.
Peace and love and endless thanks!
