"What are they doing here?"
"Maybe they lost their homes too!"
"No, they're just camping out here…"
These are the musings of two children. And also of myself and my five teammates. As we began setting up our tents amidst hammakons filled with families who had lost their homes to a typhoon the previous year, we tried to understand our purpose for being in the displacement camp.
Why are we here? What can we offer these people who lost everything in the typhoon? What good can we do over these next two weeks?
We immediately tried to find ways to get plugged into the little community that we were suddenly part of. Some of my teammates volunteered at the health clinic nearby. Some of us offered to teach at the school in the middle of the camp. We lead a bible study for the women and created relationships with our neighbors.
We once again were partaking in 'the ministry of presence'.
For the first few days, before Christmas break, I was honored with the title of 'teacher Sage' at the small school inside of our camp. I was able to teach a few lessons to the 50 excitable 5 year olds in attendance. Exhausting and exhilarating! So many hugs, and so much lice. In retrospect, I wonder how worth it those licy hugs were, but at the time I reveled in them. The school invited a few of us to come to a Christmas party that they had prepared for the children and their parents. We were treated like honored guests, eating first, heading up games, handing out awards, getting our pictures taken from every angle. We felt so special!
I fell in love with a beautiful little girl named Fryxine. The teacher told me about how her mother had died in the typhoon and her father spent all his time at work so that he could support his family. She became my little friend and frequented my lap whenever possible. She taught me all of the Filipino picture poses and I supplied the camera to capture them. I could hardly communicate with her, but it didn't matter. I didn't need words to love her and know that she loved me back.
I was sad when the kids went on Christmas break and no longer attended school. I began filling my 'teacher time' helping out at the health center. One morning my teammate Kaitlyn and I ventured over to the health center to help do some yard work. 'Yard work', it turns out, meant watching the Miss Universe pageant. Productive!
While we 'helped' at the clinic, a woman went into labor. Without even knowing her or the fathers name, we were invited in to watch the birth. From over the shoulder of the doctor delivering the baby, with shouted updates of the pageant in the background, while wearing my gardening attire, I watched a birth. As soon as Philip Jacob was born, he was whisked into the hall to be cleaned and weighed and held — BY US! Before his parents held him, Kaitlyn and I swaddled and held the beautiful, tiny baby. We were given the honor of placing the baby into his mothers arms, completing their family.
The beautiful symbolism of being present for a birth a few days before Christmas…
After watching the birth we were able to watch Miss Phillipines come in second behind Miss America. Interestingly, I had been rooting for Miss El Salvador… The birth was much more interesting to witness.
Unfortunately, a few of us were quite ill on Christmas day. We contracted a virus from our interesting living conditions and spent the majority of the holiday incapacitated in a Christmas miracle hotel room. Not ideal, but being real sick helped keep our minds off of being homesick.
The month of December went by quickly, and with it the Phillipines. Month four, over. Only 7 more months to go. I am incredibly excited to see what this next month and the new year has in store for my team and I, excited to see how the Lord uses us in 2013. So here we go, further in the world, on to Thailand!
