~Enigmatic Meanderings~

Right now I’m supposed to be preparing for a meeting about the theme for Student Life Camp 2009. That’s weird because I feel stuck in the mire of Student Life Camp 2008. Regardless, my mind is elsewhere.

I know that there are people who check out this blog and loathe long posts. If you’re one of those, sorry. However, if you are one of those people then you might not know what exactly this is referring to anyway since you probably didn’t read any of “The Philippine Chronicles.”

In one of those posts (Volume 3) I wrote about how I was struggling with the fact that I was in the Philippines while Liza was back here dealing with the culmination of our journey in infertility. Well, I misspoke (or miswrote as it were), that wasn’t the culmination. Yesterday was the culmination when Liza went for the pregnancy test. I’ll save you the suspense and go ahead and tell you that it was negative.

Below is the email Liza sent out to some friends about her feelings and reaction to his crappy news:

Unfortunately, our first round of IUI did not work for us. We appreciate each of you covering us in your prayers. Right now, I find peace knowing that I serve an ALL KNOWING God who has our journey to parenthood laid out before us and continues to prepare our hearts and minds for His plan. Honestly though, that is about the only thing getting me through the ache I feel inside.
There are a lot of questions, decisions, and unknowns for what happens next. My doctor really wants us to try at least one more time. Honestly, Chris and I just don’t know if we can go through the financial, emotional, and physically strain of it all again. We wonder if this is even God’s plan or if we should begin another route. We want to be good stewards of financial resources He has provided us and are beginning to question what to do next. I also am unsure of how much longer my body can wait before a hysterectomy will need to happen. I am hoping my doctor will let me wait until next summer, but we also don’t want to take anymore risks with my health than we have to. When? How? What? Where? Why? -all questions I am processing through. All questions I am trusting my Savior to continue to reveal in His timing.
For now, we will enjoy a month of not thinking about this, not having to make decisions! I will enjoy no doctor’s appointments and no shots. I will rest and find peace in my Comforter! I appreciate you continuing to pray through this with us. Chris and I are really open to how God chooses to put a family together for us. So, all I know to do is to continue to faithfully seek after Him with all that I am, looking to Him to fulfill desires He has placed in my heart to be a mom and recently instilled in Chris to be a dad! That excites me!
Thank you again for letting us share each step of this journey with you-the good, the bad, and the ugly. We feel so blessed to have a community that takes time to pray over us. We feel your prayers so much and are grateful for each one of you.
All my love,
Liza Kinsley

Let me first say that my wife is absolutely amazing. A lot of husbands take time on their blogs to express this sentiment about their own wives. This statement is the only example of relative truth. If I say my wife is the most amazing person in the world, and Bush or Aaron or Taylor or whoever says that their wife is the most amazing person in the world, we are all correct. Don’t fight me on this. Just accept it and move on.

Liza’s strength, grace, and depth never ceases to challenge me. I don’t let her know that enough. I don’t live up to it enough. But I’m not going to whine about that here.

Liza refers to my “recently instilled” desire to be a dad. Let me say that I have always wanted to be a dad. I just wasn’t in a hurry for it, and my timing for when it might be right certainly wasn’t lining up with Liza’s. However, her health and some other life circumstances (Roger, maybe you’re right, maybe it was the addition of Alfie in my life) changed my planned timing. I don’t know what the exact moment was, but since then I have been fully engaged in this journey.

Now is this journey over?

Certainly the journey for Liza and I to become parents is not. Even if it doesn’t work out this way, we know that there are other avenues. Even before we got married Liza and I had both been open with each other about our wanting to adopt. Even if we have children on our own, we know that God has a child (or children) elsewhere in the world for whom He wants us to be their parents.

But should we move on from trying to have one “naturally?”

And that brings me to something else. Nothing about this process has been “natural.” There’s a lot of drugs, a lot of shots, a lot of pills, cups, catheters, machines, ice, chemicals, etc., etc., etc. Excuse the frank language but there wasn’t even sex involved. So, I find myself asking, “is this what we’re supposed to be doing?” We know that there are procedures involved in infertility treatment that aren’t for us. For reasons that are both practical and ethical, we just don’t want to go there. But where is the line? Where is the point beyond which we have taken matters into our own hands (and those of our doctors and bank) and left God out of the equation except to ask that He bless our human efforts?

I don’t know. There’s not an easy answer to that.

We’ve spent a lot of money on this, thousands of dollars. Some of it has been our’s. Some of it has been other’s. Some of it is pretend money on a little plastic card for which we are now paying ridiculously exorbitant amount of interest. Are we being good financial stewards? And that’s just one issue. I don’t think that the money has been wasted. If nothing else it will hopefully give us an answer to the “what if” question that we could have potentially been asking for the rest of our lives. But it’s an expensive answer.

Our doctor and the nurses at our infertility program have seemed to assume for us that the first attempt wouldn’t work anyway. We’ve tried to ignore that and think positively. But they kept letting us know that Liza was on the lowest level of dosage and that we would up it the next time around. That is extremely frustrating for me. I know I’m not a doctor. I’m sure they had to see how Liza’s body would react to things, but why not jump forward to the second attempt or something and skip the first? Why not at least fake for us that we would have a chance?

This whole thing has not been a good experience for me for a number of reasons. The program seems cold and impersonal. There are millions of children in the world for whom we could be caring for a few. Like in ICU’s and at funeral homes, it has become increasingly evident that people just don’t know what to say to you in this situation. So, you’re left having to realize that they all mean well when what you really want to do is yell at them about how you’ve been praying and crying and screaming as much as Hannah did in the Bible but that still doesn’t mean that God is going to miraculously give you a child. Maybe that story is more for the purpose of telling us how Samuel the prophet and last judge came into the world than it does that God grants infertile women children if they pray hard enough.

Sorry. I’m not talking about you.

So, now what?

I don’t know. We’ll see. And we’ll let you know as soon as we do. So, don’t feel pressure to ask. I’ll bring it up if I want to talk about it.

In the meantime, thanks. Sincerely, thank you.

…of these two sexy guys.

…other times, it doesn’t come at all.

You know?

…can sometimes come from the strangest places.

Don’t you think?

It was.

I slept.

A lot.

I feel a good deal better now.

It’s odd to go through such a lazy day not really doing anything and then think about what this day means for us who are Christian, what Jesus was going through.  Especially, considering the movie I saw tonight.

Horton Hears a Who.

If you haven’t seen it, do.  It’s great.  Really.  And if you want, you can actually find a lot of truth in it.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the movie.  If this doesn’t make you want to see it then I don’t know what will.

“In my world everyone is a pony, and they all eat rainbows, and poop butterflies.”

To be perfectly honest, today was a hard day.  That’s kind of ridiculous for me to say considering what the day actually consisted of, but it’s true nonetheless, at least for me.

We spent most of the morning at a market so we could get stuff for people back home.  I don’t know what you’re picturing when you read “market,” but it wasn’t like a bunch of stands or shacks or anything.  It was actually kinda like a third-world strip mall made up of a bunch of little stores.  This was decently fun.  I actually get into bargaining with the sellers, which you wouldn’t think about me considering my personality.  However, it was tough ‘cause they were really stubborn.  I walked out on a few deals I was trying to work.  Usually that will send people chasing after you so that you can enter into another round of negotiations.  Not here in the Philippines.  They didn’t sweat it at all.

Once everyone had dropped way too many pesos considering what we’ve been seeing all week (myself included), we went to lunch.  There Nice and Rafonzel (two of the LDP graduates) presented us all with gifts.  I’ll save what they are so that some of you can be surprised.  Nice had also contacted her aunt who carved Student Life an eagle out of coconut husks.  It looks amazing, but I really have no idea how we’re going to get it home safely.  I think BoBe has been tasked with that responsibility.  Wish him luck.

Over lunch we discussed how the Filipinos wanted us to try one more food.  Supposedly you can’t say you’ve been to Davao until you have eaten some durian.  Durian is some kind of fruit.  It’s difficult to describe.  It is shaped like a melon but looks spiky like a pineapple, but it’s green in color.  Once you cracked it open it looked kinda like it consisted of four avocado pits with the flesh of the fruit surrounding these large seeds.  The locals have a saying about it.  “Durian tastes like Heaven, but it smells like Hell.”  And it does… smell like Hell I mean.  It stinks.  The moment the van doors opened at the fruit stand you could smell it.  As far as it tasting like Heaven, though, not so much.  Rafonzel told me that there are different kinds.  Some durian can be super-sweet, while others can be sweet and bitter.  This one leaned towards the bitter end of the spectrum.  It actually tasted like guacamole (you read that right, not avocado, guacamole with all the onions and stuff added).

We also sampled a couple of other fruits.  One was called mangostine (not sure about the spelling).  It’s what you would get if you crossed a plumb with an orange.  It was delicious.  I recommended they now say that you haven’t visited Davao until you’ve eaten a mangostine, but they insisted that durian is really where it’s at.

While we were at the fruit stand, we experienced one of the more difficult situations we’ve encountered since we’ve been here.  I’m sure some other people will be writing about this, but I’ll go ahead and do it too so that you can get a number of different perspectives.

The minute our vans pulled up there were street kids outside (well, evidently they probably weren’t all street kids, but Roger might can tell you about that), and they started knocking on our doors and windows.  Some of them had things to sell but most were just outright begging.  Our van door opened and when I stepped out there was a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, holding a naked baby boy who might have been 18 months (I’m not the best judge of children’s ages).  She never really spoke but would get your attention and then point to the boy’s belly and then his mouth, indicating he was hungry obviously.  She’d then hold her hand out for something.

A lot of you know that I usually give something to someone who is begging even in the states.  I’ve been taken advantage of by that a number of times, but I still do it pretty consistently.  Here I really didn’t have anything left, and there were just so many of them.  I was really having trouble processing it all.  The closest I could come was to think, “I wish you were involved with Compassion.”  Afterwards I found out that many of us were thinking that exact same thing.

Now you may be asking yourself, “how do they know that one of those kids isn’t involved with Compassion?”  Well, trust me… I know.  Compassion makes such a difference in the lives of these children (and obviously I know that God is the one actually making the difference through Compassion) that even though they come from the same communities and same life situations, they behave differently.  They have confidence.  They have pride (the good kind).  They have dignity.

We drove away with them staring after us (actually, first, some of them grabbed some fruit from Callie as she was trying to pass it out to them and they proceeded to fight each other for it).  It was an extremely sobering moment.  That’s yet another reason I’m an advocate.  So that more people can help Compassion help more children in more places.

We traveled back to Manila tonight.  We had a final dinner with Noel, the Compassion country director for the Philippines, and Kiwi and Daniel (two of the other LDP graduates).  They also presented us with gifts.  It seems there is no end to the hospitality of the Filipino people, regardless of life circumstance.

The rest of our day has been full of goodbyes and questions.  Goodbyes to all of the friends we’ve made in the short time we’ve been here.  Questions about what the future holds, specifically if we can get Kiwi, Daniel and Nice over to the states for the summer.  It sucks.  And it’s hard.  But I trust God.  I really do.  I know that He desires to change the lives of children in all twenty-four countries in the world in which Compassion works, and I know that He desires to change the lives of teenagers in the U.S.  I believe that one of the ways in which He accomplishes both is through the relationship of an American teenage sponsor and their Compassion child.  It really does change two lives.  So, I know that He is working out His will and purpose for how to best make those connections this summer.  But I desperately yearn for Him to choose to do that by bringing these other LDP graduates.

That is my prayer, and I pray it confidently and humbly.  Please, join me.

In a few hours we’ll wake up and head to the airport to fly to Tokyo for a day.  Yet another extreme moment of culture shock, I’m sure.

Signing off…

If you read yesterday’s post and missed the Balut video, that’s because I had trouble uploading it, but it’s there now. So, be sure to check it out.

Today was our last day to really see any of the Compassion stuff. As I mentioned, we had a lot of filming left to do. Well, we rock-n-rolled and, despite the torrential downpour we experienced at one point, we made it happen.

To start the day we headed to yet another Compassion project, and this one was, of course, fantastic. We were greeted again by some of the children. The hung homemade ribbon necklaces around our necks and escorted us individually to seats for a program. The little girl who escorted me wasn’t much for conversation, but she was super-cute.

If you remember, this is one of the first visits Davao has ever had from Compassion advocated, so they really pulled out all the stops. There were a lot of greetings, a number of musical performances and a chance to build and paint the wall of a classroom, which our fearless event directors were more than gracious to undertake.

This was our first day to spend with Rafonselle, the one LDP student who has already been granted a visa for the summer. So we spent a good bit of time filming her with some of the children. I told her that we just wanted some shots of her talking to them or singing with them or playing with them or whatever really. She was awesome. She jumped right in, and you could definitely tell that she knew what it was like to be where they are now, and she looks at them differently than we do. No pity. No worry. No appreciation. No Fancy. She looks at them with hope.

After lunch we drove out to the middle of nowhere through some beautiful country. We haven’t seen much of rural Philippines, but we did today and there were moments where it could really be breathtaking. Our destination was some rice fields where we were planning on shooting Rafonselle’s interview. Through a lot of waiting for motorcycles to pass, we were able to get most of it done, until it started sprinkling. I should mention that before this occurred our van driver realized one of the tires was flat and left us out there to go take care of it. Roger was convinced that it would pass after a little while. It didn’t. Right as the bottom dropped out, our heroic chauffer comes bounding down the road to rescue us. We ditched the rest and came back to the hotel. Luckily we were able to finish it there.

With regards to Rafonselle, let me just say that our students this summer are in for a treat. She gets it. She really wants to meet Chris Tomlin, but as Taylor has said more than once, ol’ Tomlin “should be so lucky to get to meet her.”

After dinner tonight (we had pizza; can you believe it?) we spent a good bit of time just kinda debriefing our week. So, I feel like I might share a bit of it here.

In transferring posts from my old Xanga to this blog, I found one I had written a few years ago basically whining about how frustrated I was that my current ministry was to middle-class, suburban, white American kids. This made me think about how there was some moment during the last year-and-a-half that I just made a decision that I was no longer going to feel guilty about that. If God has proved anything throughout history and in my own life, it’s that He knows exactly what He’s doing. He’s not just making it up as he goes along. So, while I believe that He is big enough to handle me questioning Him, I can certainly try to realize when those questions and complaints are purely selfish in nature. My post about ministering to middle-class, suburban, white American kids was/is selfish. So, what has that led to?

Callie and I were talking earlier this week about what we do in response to everything we’re seeing. I said that one of the things I’ve realized is that there’s only so much I can do. That might sound simple, but for many of us I think it can actually be somewhat profound. It was for me. Here’s why…

There are a lot of problems in the world, a lot of injustices. As a Christian I have a responsibility to do something about this. It is incumbent upon me to give to the poor, care for the sick, feed the hungry, provide for the needy, make disciples of the world, care for widows and orphans, and basically, look after the “least-of-these.” But you know what? I don’t bear the burden of giving to every poor person, caring for every sick person, feeding all the hungry, providing for everyone in need, making sure every person hears the Gospel, caring for every widow and every orphan and ensuring that anyone who might be considered “the least of these” is looked after. Because that’s your responsibility too. We share that. If I tried to make a difference in the world by giving to every relief organization I come in contact with, going on every mission trip I hear about, promoting every awareness video or event, reading every book on how to heal the world’s ills, and jumping on every social-justice bandwagon that comes my way, I would utterly, miserably, and completely fail. So, what do I do?

I become obedient to that which God calls me, and I get other people on board as much as possible to fill in the gaps. This for me is what it means to be an advocate.

This past year I received an email from Compassion saying they were looking for more people for their advocates network. Now, I already do a lot with and for Compassion, but it’s all through Student Life, which, though a ministry, is also my job. So, I became an advocate to be a part of something outside of my work. It’s something I really believe in and something that works. That advocacy for me leads to action, as I hope it will for others. Advocacy is about action, not awareness. If I constantly talk to people about Compassion, but it never leads to them sponsoring, then what am I doing?

The other thing my refutation of guilt has lead to is a new and different outlook on what I experience overseas in developing countries. I don’t feel a lot of pity anymore. I actually feel a great deal of respect. This makes me uneasy because it seems such an unnatural reaction to seeing what we see on these types of trips or in the squatter camps of South Africa, but that makes me feel like it might be right. The Kingdom of God is unnatural. In fact, it’s supernatural in the purest sense of the word. God has such great affection for these people, for all people, and when I can catch just a glimmer of that, it changes the way I can relate to other people completely. I can be a voice for them, and when that voice, the way I tell their story, comes from a place of respect rather than pity or guilt, I believe it is more honoring to them and to the work that God is accomplishing in their lives.

Lastly, my decision has changed the way I feel about those middle-class, suburban, white American kids. They’re a product of their culture just like these Compassion children are. Neither are at fault for where they find themselves. For whatever reason that’s just where they are. So I can’t get upset with them. I can’t fault them. I have to be just as patient and compassionate with them as I would be with others.

I live for the moment that a student gets it. This is my purpose in life. God manifests that purpose in me in a variety of ways, and being an advocate and sponsor with Compassion is just one of them. I look forward to a lifetime of discovering all the others.

Tomorrow we visit a market to… well, you know… shop (nothing like finishing what I just wrote and then typing that sentence to test my resolve to not feel guilty). We then fly back to Manila for a final meal with some of the Compassion country staff before catching a few hours of sleep and then flying Japan for 24 hours in Tokyo and then back to the ‘Ham by way of Detroit.

Not sure if this will be the last post before then or not. If it is, I’ll be sure to post any more reactions I might have once I get back in the U.S. Until then…

Thanks to all of you who read this for journeying along with us.

Signing off…

We’re at the new island now, and we’re a little over halfway through our trip. So, they were gracious enough to plan into our hectic schedule a day to kinda relax and take it easy. I say that to give you fair warning that this post may seem cush and trivial when considered against everything else we’ve been doing. That’s because it is. However, it’s also needed and part of what makes a Compassion vision trip so effective, but I won’t get into all that now.

I woke up this morning and went to the lobby area (it’s not really inside, so I don’t know if it is actually a lobby) so I could use the internet. I grabbed some breakfast, bought an hour worth of wi-fi from the front desk and then called Liza on Skype (which rules, by the way; free plug for Skype). I also was able to post about yesterday, though I didn’t quite finish it before we left, but it should be finished by now.

We then went to Nice’s church (she’s one of the LDP’s that might be with us this summer). It was the 61st anniversary of the church. This means that it was founded in 1947 soon after the Japanese had been occupying the Philippines during WWII. So, the service was really centered around that, and they had pulled out all the stops. There was a lot of singing and a lot of dancing. However, it wasn’t really what I had expected. It was pretty modernized, a nice church building, a sound system, a live band, a screen and a projector. But it was still really cool to just see the people worshipping there and to hear how proud and joyful they are. And I mean really joyful. I won’t get off on a tangent here (even though I could), but I’ll just say that one of the things that has made it difficult for me to find a church lately is that people seem to have anything but joy at a lot of churches I visit or else it seems to be completely contrived (yes, I’m being judmental by saying that, I guess, but that’s not really the point). Anyway… before the service started there was a little boy running around the front just playing with a balloon. He would even run up onstage sometimes if his balloon got away from him and ended up there. I leaned over and asked Taylor what he thought would happen if a little boy was running around the stage playing before one of the services at our churches. We decided some uber-important dude, would get onto him or chide his mother for not making him stop.

After the church they had prepared food and drinks for people to hang around and spend time together to celebrate the church’s anniversary. Of course we immediate found ourselves with plates full of stuff. I sampled everthing and some of it was pretty good, like the banana chips and banana bread. However, there was also some kind of tamale thing, and it wasn’t so hot. They also gave us bottles of some red drink that they called red tea. It tasted like Kool Aid. I was hot so I drank all of mine. Later we found out they had made it. Supposedly the water had been boiled, but the bottle may have been cleaned out with who know’s what. A waiting game ensued to see if anyone would show symptoms of some horrible stomach illness. We didn’t, but it did make us feel like a bunch of pansies, like, “oh, I’m sorry. I can’t have what you prepared for me. I’m American. Our stomachs are weak. We really only eat processed foods.”

After “fellowshipping” for awhile, we hopped on our vans and came back to the hotel (Actually, to be perfectly honest, it’s more like a resort. No, it is a resort). We changed and caught a boat across to another island to a beach (I can hear your groans now). We ate lunch there and spent the afternoon engaging in various activities. I’ll spare you the details of the $10 hour-long massages by the water that had a little Filipino lady bending Graham like a pretzel or the snorkeling outing to an outlying coral reef where a sea serpent was spotted.

So, after our afternoon of nothing important, we came back to the resort, changed again, and went to a “cultural dinner.” That phrase can mean anything so we didn’t know what to expect. The dinner was good. The hotel catered it. But here’s the deal… evidently we’re the first (or possibly the second, depending on who you ask) Compassion advocate group to visit Davao City. That’s because the island we’re on (Mindalau) is known for its criminal and terrorist activity (though it’s nowhere near us). So, whenever the Filipino Compassion office suggests that groups come here, the American office in Colorado Springs says “no.” But for some reason they let us come. Hmm… Anyway, the Compassion LDP graduates and alumni association were so excited for us to be here (and for our coming to hopefully open doors for other groups to visit in the future) that they planned the whole evening for us. There was worship and singing and dancing and all kinds of fun.

One singing group consisted of four cousins who were all former Compassion children. They were amazing. Very personable and incredible singers as well as performers.

The last dance the group performed was with these two long bamboo poles on the ground that two people would slap together on every third beat. The dancers would dance in between the poles avoiding the slaps. After they were done, of course, they wanted us to join in. I was the second to give it a try, and I have to say that I didn’t do that bad.

At the end of the night, though, came the culmination of everything. The balut challenge.

Let me give some history here. There’s a show on the travel channel called Strange Foods or something like that. Basically, this guy goes around to different places and tastes of the local cuisine, no matter how bizarre it might be. Taylor saw an episode before we left where this dude was in the Philippines and ate some kind of cooked baby duck out of an egg.

On the first day we were here we asked the Filipinos about it. They lit up and said that this food had been featured on Fear Factor as well and that it really was a common delicacy around here. So, we’ve been talking about trying it all week, like really trying to gas each other up. So, Nice contacted her sister here in Davao and had her prepare two dozen of the things. Not everyone tried it and not everyone finished it, but it was great fun for all, Filipino and American alike.

Below is a video of the experience intercut with Pattie’s explanation of just what it is. Some of the audio sucks, and some settings got jacked on the camera so parts might be a little grainy, but you’ll get the idea.

And that’s that. We see our last project tomorrow, and we’ve still got a ton of filming to do. Pray for us.

Signing off.

Today, (actually yesterday for me but still today for you, if that makes any sense) was jam packed. We’re leaving Manila today so we had to pack up all our stuff again and get it on the bus before we could leave. Then we headed off to another project.

With it being Saturday we got yet another persepective on the Compassion projects here because this is the day that the children actually attend the project regularly. When we arrived at the church we were greeted by a line of the children in traditional Filipino dress greeting us. Then everyone went inside for a program while Taylor, Eric and I set up for shooting.

By the way, our Compassion rep here is named Pattie (I’ll try to get a picture of her on here later), and she is awesome. She’s a former Compassion child herself and graduate of the LDP program. We often throw around various versions of the phrase “making it happen,” but Pattie brings new meaning to those words. Anything we’re doing would not be possible without her.

At the project today our group was joined by the Continentals. If you don’t know what the Continentals are, they’re a kinda show-choir group of teens and young-twenties that travels around performing. It’s a Christian thing. They’re not my style by any means, but evidently they get a lot of children sponsored, so kudos to them. They performed a couple of songs for the kids, which I’m sure was good for them, but we could have done without.

After the program, we had the LDP’s join one of the classes so that we could capture some footage of them really interacting with some of the children. This was one of the most impressive things I was able to see. It was a class of really young kids (maybe 4 or 5 years old), and all they were doing was making fish out of construction paper. But they loved it, and their teacher, Glenda, was incredible.

We shot with them for awhile and then brought out all of the younger children of the project to shoot some group stuff. There were a lot of them. We had them wave at the camera and say some things as a group, and they were awesome. They really listened and nailed it, and I think they had a great time doing it. Afterwords, I walked up into the group of them and was thanking them and giving them all high fives. Then they started laughing and pointing at me and calling me Santa Clause. I’ve got to lose weight.

Once we were finished at the project we boarded the bus to do some home visits. I had heard about where we were going, which was a cemetery where people lived (yes, you read that correctly), but I was not prepared by any means. I’m going to do my best to describe this, but I’m positive words can’t do it justice. We have some photos and footage, so you’ll just have to look for that later, but without the sounds and smells, I don’t think it’s possible to even then get a handle on it.

This is a cemetery full of crypts and monuments, not a graveyard. Graves are stacked on top of each other and in varying conditions. Then there are “homes” and stores actually built on top of the graves. These people literally live in the cemetery. From what I understand the government actually cracked down on it a few years ago. So there used to be more. But not they’ve all retreated behind the tombs.

You see, the cemetery is surrounded by high walls with tombs built into them, just one on top of the other. Behind these walls there exists a whole neighborhood of dwellings. It’s dark. It’s cramped. It’s wet. It’s dirty. It’s small. It’s horrifying. It’s heart-wrenching.

So that we wouldn’t be rude yet give Taylor time to shoot, Ben and I went to visit a home. Instead we visited like six. I’m still trying to process what we saw.

One home was literally the size of my master bathroom at home. I’m not exagerating. There was a tiny bit of floor space. And then two bunks stacked on top of each other. This was for a family of four. The mother has lived there 27 years, her whole life. She was born there and is still there. However, it was amazing to listen to the hope she has for her little boy, Michael, who is in the Compassion project. Because of Compassion he won’t be living in that shack in twenty years.

Here’s a video of the place.

I’ve got to go. I’ll finish later. Sorry…

Off to church.

Okay… I’m back.

Church was cool by the way. Read the above post.

Back to what I was saying about the homes of the tomb dwellers… Another house we visited was a kind of tree house. Actually, that’s not true. It was a tree house. It was built above a creek, about 8′ high. I’ve tried to put a little video of it below. When we asked the mother there what we could pray for her about, she asked for health because she had fallen through the grate that connects her tree house to the rest of the land a few months ago and hurt her head. She also told us that when it rains the water reaches the house and when it storms they evacuate because the tree moves too much.

Then this afternoon we flew out to another island.

It’s so much to process, and it’s a ridiculously insurmountable obstacle to try to figure out how to communicate the impact of it to you guys and anyone else. But I’m trying.

Signing off.

I know that each post I’ve made while on this trip has included some variation on the phrase “today was a great day,” but today was truly an exceptionally great day.  Taylor and Eric really made it happen with regards to video.  The project we visited was absolutely fantastic.  The LDP students are an absolute delight to have around.  Ben and Pattie, our Filipino Compassion rep, are overly gracious and accomodating.  Plus we’re just having a really good time.

We boarded the bus again this morning (yes, I remembered the tripod this time) and began our drive to Kapatirang Iristiyano sa Coloong Child Development Center, aka Compassion Project PH-227.  On the way Taylor and I finished scripting this video we’re making (better late than never), and I think it’s going to be awesome.

We arrived and all the children at the project were gathered outside playing instruments and singing.  Everyone got off the bus and one of the children would walk up to us individually and escort us to a seat inside.  They did a whole program for us with singing and dancing and drama and scripture quotation and testimonies from some parents and games and a lot of pointing and laughing (mostly at us).  I teared up a couple of times.  It’s difficult to really fully explain what it’s like to watch pure joy and hope alive and thriving in the lives of children for whom the world says should have none whatsoever.

We then boarded some tricycabs (basically bicycles with a sidecar, oh, and an umbrella to keep the sun off) and headed off to visit the home of one of the children, Ruzzel.  We rode through the community that largly consists of fish farms.  Evidently the land used to be farmland, but at somepoint in the ninties it was flooded (I still don’t quite understand why or how) and is not used to raise fish.  A number of the homes are just built on stilts out in the water.  Once we arrived, we walked on some concrete walkways through some of the water and then boarded some rafts to actually get to the Ruzzel’s home.

Now, I don’t know what exactly you’re picturing when I write “raft,” but let me describe it for you.  The rafts range in size anywhere from 3′ squared to about 4′ by 12′.  They consist of layers of 1″ styrofoam lashed together with string and varying amounts of wood.  They also tend to be crawling with various forms of amphibious insect life.  They were precarious to say the least.

We visited the home (which was just out in the middle of the water), all of us, that’s somewhere around twenty people crammed into this really small building.  Ruzzel, his mother, and his father live there and have for 22 years.  In addition to fishing they raise African Parakeets to sell in pet shops.  They were very gracious and welcoming to all of us as we overtook their home.

We then boarded our rafts again and made the journey back.  Taylor even kept the camera out and filmed from the raft (remember, styrofoam and wood).  Luckily, we all got back without any of us (or our equipment) falling in, though a couple of us, yours truly included, came close at least once.  We hopped back on teh tricycabs and headed back to the project for lunch.  They had prepared for us a real spread that included fried chicken (a real staple here in the Philippines), rice (another staple as I’m sure you could have guessed), a vegetable dish with quail eggs and something that consisted mostly of tofu and fish.  It was all delicious.  But nothing compared to the fresh, ripe mangos they gave us for dessert.  Now, many of you know that I have a slight obsession with mangos, and these didn’t let me down.  My fingers are still sticky.

After lunch we got back on our bus and visited a part of the community that is lovingly referred to as “Devil’s Island.”  This is an area that is reported to have a large criminal population.  However, we were reassured that we were perfectly safe because most of the criminals were either sleeping or off somewhere doing their “work.”

I had thought that the water community we had visited earlier was a mind-boggling example of poverty, but Devil’s Island topped that.  Still, in both places we are greeted with nothing but smiles and curiosity at what we’re doing.

I have also noticed on this trip the reputation that Compassion has in the communities.  There are people everywhere and children everywhere that aren’t associated with the project in any way.  However, they know about it.  They know about the work that Compassion is doing in the lives of other children in their community, and they are excited about it and more than willing to help with anything that will help get more children sponsored.  I believe that is just as much a testimony to what Compassion is doing as anything else.

After our visit to Devil’s Island we returned to the project and spent some more time filming witht the LDP’s.  The rest of the group joined the kids for craft time making bracelets and picture frames.  I’m not sure what else happened in there but a lot of them came out with writing and drawing all over their arms and faces.

Then to contrast it completely, we went and ate an all-you-can eat buffet at the second largest mall in Asia called Mega Mall.  How absurd is that?  I ate my fill of sushi and drank three glasses of mango juice.  I wonder what Ruzzel had.

I leave you tonight with some greetings from the children of Kapatirang Kristiyano sa Coloong Child Development Center.

We visit another project in the morning (supposedly in a cemetery) and then fly out in the afternoon to another island for a few days.  I don’t know what our internet situation will be, but I’ll post if I can.  Until then…

Signing off.