Day 6 - Church & home visit #2

Today we went to another Church that partners with Compassion, to see the work that Tearfund do via Compassion at this church. This church was not located on the side of the road like many others were, instead we got off the bus and walked through the slums to get to the church. I think this is a wonderful place to setup a church - right in the thick of where they are working.

When we arrived at the church we were greeted by a very energetic bunch of kids! And we were surprised to see that they had made a large sign for us. There were several dance performances, as well as a solo song, and a duet.

After the performances we got to mingle with the kids, and also view some of the arts and crafts activities they had done. Of course there were lots of photos and selfies. At this church two of the group were able to meet their sponsored children for the first time.

After this it was time for lunch - I thought the kids were very clever in using their chairs as tables, and sitting on the floor!

Once lunch was done the majority of the kids left, but a bunch stayed behind… We suspect they were kids of the church staff and probably also kids who lived nearby. We were able to play with the kids for a while. They were very energetic, and there was a lot of running around, sliding on the floor, skipping, jumprope, piggy back rides etc. I really enjoyed this time and being able to interact with the children in this way. During this time I also had the chance to chat to a couple of the staff and hear a little about them and the work they did at the church, as well as chat to a couple of the kids.

Next we went to visit a family who was part of this community. We walked through the slums to get to their house. Once we arrived at their house we met the mother and the child who was part of the sponsorship program outside their house. We were not able to go into their house as it was on the 2nd level. We chatted to the mother out side and heard a bit of her story. She lived in this area with her husband, and a lot of her family around her.

When we asked what the impact of being involved with the project had had on her life the mother started crying, she said the main thing that the project had done for her was help her to learn about God/Jesus. It was amazing to see that the first thing that came to mind was not “oh now we have food” or “we now have some security for our kids”.

When asked if there was anything that we could pray for she immediately called out her niece. Again I was amazed she didn’t think of herself, not even her kids, rather her first thought was of others. Her niece was 14 years old, and has leukaemia, and with help from the church she is able to get some chemotherapy. I cried a bit that day, thinking about how a 14 year old has to go through chemo, and all the while living in a challenging condition. We were able to pray for her niece and also her family.

After the house visits were complete, we headed back to the church where we got to chat to the church staff again, and pray for them. I really enjoyed visiting this church and hearing the stories of staff and children alike. They were happy, and smiling even though their circumstances are not the best (especially by our standards).

Below some images from around the area, either taken while driving to the place we got off the bus, walking to the church, walking to the home visits, or walking back to where our bus was parked.

After the church visit we went to Fort San Pedro. I had been there before, but it was nice to go again and get the perspective of a different guide. After the Fort visit we went to Jolibee’s, as some of the team had not yet been to this iconic Fillipeno fast food chain yet.

After this we had a late dinner where we discussed the upcoming trip to the “Ocean Park” the following day. We discovered there was a disconnect in expectations of what an “Ocean Park” might be which was good to know. The NZ team were expecting to be going to the pools, and expecting there to be slides etc, however the place we were actually going was to an Aquarium. We had a good laugh about how if we hadn’t worked this out we would have shown up the following day in our togs, and our tip host Freds would have been wondering what was going on!

I then spent the evening printing out some images to add to the photo book we have been creating to give to Cassandra, as well as making sure the other gifts we had purchased were in the bags we had prepared to give her, as the following day I would be meeting her for the first time.