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My Filipino Friends Forever

I never thought I would be able to love people as much as I loved the filipinos. I was with them for one month and my heart loved in a way I never knew possible. There is no way to describe it except to say that it truely was God’s love coming through me.

Last month in the Philippines I made true friends. Friends that showed me more kindness and love than most people ever had.. They lived in Lower Manggahan-a squader community that we worked at all month. The first day we walked into Lower Manggahan my thoughts were of how dirty, smelly, and foreign the place was. The houses were made of wood, tin, cloth and other random materials. Trash lined the dirt paths and hundreds of kids ran around EVERYWHERE. They would run and jump on you like you were thier own, personal, human jungle gym. I quickly learned to love this community and see it for its true beauty.  Now it has become my home. A home that I love and long to be back at someday.  

Darriel, Joas, Apple, Rommel, Eliza, Richard, Naiomi, and Ivy (all around the age of 19) accepted me into their friend group. Even though I was the outsider, the foreigner, the American…they didn’t treat me any different. I felt as if we had been friends for a long time. I never felt like there was a cultural differnce between us…all that mattered was that we enjoyed our time together and would have a lot of fun.

We went to the community for our scheduled morning bible studies and afternoon feedings…but I also spent all of my free time there as well. Not because I had to but because I wanted to and looked forward to spending more time with our new friends.  Night times were always the best time of day (probably because the little kids were asleep so it allowed us to spend more in-depth time with them). We hung out at the basketball court to play guitar, dance, sing karaoke, talk and just hang out.

Joas is an amazing dancer and moves his body like I have never seen. He taught us a dance to the song “insomnia” that we tried to perfect. It was fun to learn and watch him laugh at us because he was  so much better than we were.  

        
     
 We got the chance to take our friends to a waterfall. We spent the whole day just swimming, jumping of cliffs, talking and relaxing. It was one of the best days of the whole month.

                The last 3 nights in the Philippines we decided to sleep in the Lower Manggahan community. We layed out sheets on the basketball court they brought us pillows to sleep on. I wanted to soak in as much time as I had left so I literally did not sleep for the last 3 days we were there (made for an easier sleep on our travel day for Malaysia J ).

                Leaving the Phlippines was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I could have stayed there for the rest of my race time and been perfectly content with it. This made me start off Malaysia with not the best of attitudes. I didn’t know how I would ever love anyone else like I loved my filipino friends. I didn’t know how a month could get any better than the one I just had.  I had left my heart in the Philippines and did not how to transfer it to Malaysia.

                I am now at the end of my month in Malaysia. After a lot of prayer I was able to finally get my heart to be here. Yes, I still miss my filipino friends and think about them all of the time, but I love the Malay people as well. I feel like God is showing me how to love ALL his people with a supernatural love. Hopefully the supernatural becomes natural and loving people with God’s love is just an everyday normal for me.