Day 8 - Meeting Cassandra - 2

Today we went to the church that Cassandra goes to.

We were greeted by a very excited bunch of children who were singing and dancing. Some of the kids came to us and gave us a necklace. Cassandra was the one who gave my necklace, and she also gave me a bracelet. It took me 4 days to realise that I was the only one who got a bracelet. I think she made the bracelet out of the bead set that we gave her.

We sat down in the designated seats and watched a few performances, as well as listened to a couple stories from people who used to be sponsored children. It is always inspiring to hear how sponsorship has impacted their lives and changed their lives trajectory.

I was keeping an eye out for Cassandra, but it was hard to spot her. Eventually I located her, she was near a pillar so out of my general vision. She participated in a cultural dance where she had flags and waved them around at the appropriate times.

At some point during the performances, the three children that members from our group sponsored gave us a printed photo of the previous day and wrote some words on the back of it. They also gave us a small paper bag with confetti and some key rings.

Everyone in our group also got a small round tin that had some crocheted flowers in it. Cassandra also gave me a letter that she had written the day before using some of the gifts we had given her.

There was one performance that stood out, and we were all impacted by the words in the song Thank you for giving to the Lord. Whether you agree with the theology of the song or not, the bit that stood out to me was the chorus:

Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am a life that was changed
Thank you for giving to the Lord
I am so glad you gave

When you think about this in the context of child sponsorship - we give some money that for us may not be a difficult thing to do, but for the child who is sponsored its a really big thing, and it makes a huge difference in their lives.

After all the performances were done, we had the opportunity to look at some photos that were aligned to different areas that the teams have been working on with the children. Cassandra came up to me and grabbed my hand and took me around the areas where the photos were where we (unsuccessfully) tried to find a photo of her.

After looking for her in the photos I gave Cassandra two further gifts, which were of a more personal nature, one was a crocheted bag that Christine had made and the other was the photo book that we have been working on. She seemed quite excited to receive them and had a look through the photo book a few times before handing it to her Mother. Later on we got a couple of photos of Cassandra with the bag.

After chatting to Cassandra and her mother again, as well as other people within the church, it was time for the children to have their lunch so they went outside while the adults got to chat with the church staff a bit more.

At some point, I went outside and look at what the kids were the opportunity to make the first two ice creams for the children. The ice creams were ube and cheese flavored.. I had a taste of the ice-cream too, it was an unusual flavour because we are not accustomed to having cheese in our ice-cream.

I went back inside where we had lunch and continued chatting with the Church staff. Lunch was a variety of foods including spring rolls, eel, pork and chicken plus a traditional Filipino desert. I tried some eel which was fried, and had bits of the other foods too.

Cassandra and her mother had to leave after they had finished their lunch. I felt sad that I was not going to be seeing Cassandra again. It was difficult to say good bye as I now knew more about their situation, how they lived etc. I was able to pray for Cassandra and her family before they left.

It was once again an honour and privilege to meet Cassandra and her mother. I am sure that we will continue to write letters and connect in that way moving forward.

Once we’d finished lunch we sat with some of the young people of the church and sung some songs... They tried to choose songs we knew so that we could sing along. They also sung a couple of songs in their own language.

After this it was time to do home visits. As this was a coastal area home visits were a bit further away from the church than the homes we had visited in other areas. Church also is working on a satellite church elsewhere within the vicinity. So we took the bus to closer to the area where the homes we would be visiting were. We then took e-tricycles which were basically a e-bike, with a side cart attached. The side cart could accomodate up to two people. The tricycles were driven by people from the church - They operate these e-tricycles as their job where people pay them to take them somewhere.

We arrived and had to walk a short distance to get to the home. Once we were there, we met mother, father, and the young child as well as her older sister.

This visit was the most difficult out of the three visits I had done during this trip. The mother and father had been unable to eat much (or anything) for the past two weeks as they had been struggling to feed the children. Any food they could get/afford they gave to their children. The children were part of the church program, so the family was getting some help from the church, but none of the children were sponsored. There were many tears as we listened to their situation about the lack of food, lack of security, lack of finance and struggle to find work. After we prayed for family, we left to head back towards the bicycles.

On the walk back to the tricycles, one of the team from New Zealand asked if they would be able to sponsor the youngest child (and therefore by default the family). The child development workers were able to go back and tell the mother that her child had been sponsored , they were once again lots of tears, but this time tears of joy. (In a future post I hope to go into how the sponsorship model works, and how the whole family is assisted when a child is sponsored.)

The sponsor of the child had the opportunity to take some photos with them before we headed back on the tricycles to the satellite church.

We were given real coconuts with coconut water in them and straw so that we could drink it. It tasted kind of fruity, and was reasonably refreshing.

At the satellite church, we met some children who were hanging around and playing and got to chat with him and interact with them .

We prayed for the church staff and the new building they were working on and left to go back to the hotel .

Today we were also switching hotels - So we went to the new location which was also on the coast. We have one more full day in the Philippines before we are heading back to New Zealand the next day.

This evening we got to hear the story of Fredz. Fredz is our guide from compassion and lives in the Philippines. He is also an ex sponsored child, and his story is very challenging. His role is to lead groups like ours, coordinate between churches projects, accomodation, etc and to help us with any questions we might have + translate where required. Fredz did a really amazing job, and really helped us to understand the culture etc in all the environments we went into.

Below some photos made throughout the day