Day 12

Today was my last Sunday here in the Philippines. We attended church at Zion Prayer Garden. The church has an amazing vision to make disciples and plant churches throughout the Philippines. The kids from WHY and I sang 3 worship songs as part of service – “Shout to the Lord”, “Enough”, and “No Sweeter Name”. The kids really love singing and worshiping. Then the church gave the four of us from the U.S. an opportunity to speak. I didn’t know they were going to do that, so I just had to wing it and listen to the Holy Spirit on what to say. That’s always fun! ☺

After church, we made one last trip to Jollibee for lunch. Jollibee is the Filipino equivalent to our McDonalds. You can get fried chicken with rice there, so that’s what I had. Just about every meal in the Philippines comes with rice. I should have rice coming out my ears by now with all of it that I’ve eaten these past couple of weeks. Before we left for lunch, we got to meet Jeraluz’s mother, Lucy. She is the one for whom I have been asking you to pray. She is pregnant, and she is scheduled to deliver a baby girl next week. The doctors say that the baby is in the breech position, and that she will have to have a C-section, which the family cannot afford to pay for. We had an opportunity to lay hands on Lucy and pray for her and this baby girl. I still believe that she will turn. I could actually feel the baby kicking quite a bit against my hand as we were praying.

After lunch, we took some of the kids to the neighborhood Karaoke place. It’s not what you would typically see in the U.S. This is just a little stand set up outdoors. It has a huge TV and speakers. You put in a 5-peso coin, and that buys you 2 songs. That’s a pretty great deal. It would be like 20 cents per song in the States. Next to the karaoke stand was a field with goats, so they got to enjoy our singing. Filipinos love singing, but then so do I. Needless to say, we were there for almost 3 hours. So much fun! This one Filipino man came towards the end of our time there, and he had an amazing voice. He started singing the song “Faithfully” by Journey, and asked if anyone knew the song…. so he and I wound up singing it as a duet. I found out later that he gives voice lessons at a local music store. Yeah, he pretty much showed me up. It was still a blast, though.

Tonight was our “despidida” (our farewell party). We had an awesome meal of rice, chicken, bbq pork, lumpia, and Dunkin Donut’s doughnut holes for dessert. ☺ After dinner we gave the kids some gift bags with toiletry items and some pictures we had taken of them with their parents or guardians. Then they gave us gifts. This is when I lost it. I’ve been teaching the kids a lot of worship songs and guitar stuff while I’ve been here, so they made me a homemade booklet in the shape of a guitar. They had each taken the time to write a personal message for me. I think the fact that they took so much time to do that combined with the fact that I’m leaving tomorrow caused the tears to come. These children are so amazing. They have really welcomed us into, not only their home, but into their hearts. I can’t wait to see all of the wonderful things God is going to do in and through these kids. Please pray that they would continue to grow in the knowledge of Him and have a true understanding of His love and grace in their lives.

Tomorrow I will head to Manila for a few days. It all feels bittersweet. I’m looking forward to seeing friends there, but saying goodbye to these kids is going to be difficult.

Colleen




From Jonathan:

Tomorrow we will get up early and have breakfast with the kids, then we are hoping to do our last load of laundry before we all depart. After lunch we are planning to take Colleen to the airport and then Mom is going to see the doctor she saw a few weeks ago about her leg at 2:30 that afternoon. Michelle, Mom and I are leaving Cebu at 8:15 on Tuesday evening, and then we leave Manila at 6:30 Wednesday morning. I have really enjoyed my time here and I wish I could stay longer. Unfortunately my plane ticket is a round trip ticket and was very expensive, so I suppose it is almost time to come home. I feel like there have been a lot of frustrations and last minute changes in plans, but I truly feel like God has done some incredible things while we have been here. I would love to tell you that I have done a lot of great things here, but that is simply not true. A lot of incredible things happened while we have been here, but they are too incredible for our team to have done on our own. It is very obvious to me that God has been working here in Cebu and at WHY. We will have two more kids come to live at WHY before the end of the month, another child will be sponsored by someone, we have developed a very good relationship with ZPG and the people there, Pastora Salve Cuizon will start coming to WHY every Saturday starting next Saturday for a few hours to have a Bible study with the kids, and we starting having a daily devotional/worship time here at WHY and we are very confident that the kids will continue to do that after we leave. We also have a chance to visit the homes of almost all of the kids already living here (we did not get to visit Jeraluz's home or John Lloyd's…but Michelle and I visited John Lloyd's home last January), and we visited with the principal of the elementary school and the high school in Liloan where our kids at WHY attend school. I feel like we have faced a lot of opposition while we have been here, but through prayer we stuck together and God still did incredible work in the midst of it all. Praise be to God!!