During our first day here in the Philippines, when we were getting briefed about all the ministries, we could be involved with, I was completely torn between two: the independent living program and pursuing a relationship with Joy, a twenty-year-old young pregnant woman that was due to have her baby within the next few weeks. As we prayed that night over what we wanted to do, I knew was excited about God calling me to the independent program, but yet there was definitely a part of me that was sad about not getting to know Joy. However, as it turned out, they had to remodel her room this month to get ready for the baby so she was sent over to come live with us!
Since the kids were in school every morning from 7-3, this gave me several opportunities to hang out with her when she herself wasn’t in school. Our time together was spent either hanging out at the house listening to music, searching for the cutest baby stuff at the local mall, or our weekly Starbucks dates each Wednesday. It has definitely been an awesome time of fellowship and developing a sweet new friendship!
This last week Joy asked me to accompany her to KIM’s bi-weekly feeding at Tent City, the place where she came from and her family still resides. In September of 2009, a massive Typhoon (Ondoy) swept through Manila flooding out thousands of people. As a result several families were evacuated to a local gym where they lived for 7 months before being relocated to their current makeshift housing in Tent City. Here many of the families have survived off their limited supply of fresh vegetables and the weekly bag of rice that the men were paid as their wages from long hours of manual labor. The families have no health care and are surrounded by diseases and ailments like boils, pink eye, diarrhea, and TB… the little medicine that they are given through aid is constantly running out. Though several families have now been given land and more stable housing around the Tent City area there are still several families living in the tents and struggling to provide for themselves.
***Joy is due to have her baby mid-February (though she and I have told baby Angela that we’d like her to make an appearance before I leave on the 29th!) Please be praying for her until then!***
