The past three months of travel have been very indulgent for Nelly and I. We do what we want, when we want, where we want, how we want. We lay on beaches and drink ice cold beer. However, the past 2 days have been the antithesis to our current travel behavior. Earlier this year Matt's mom's church in Piedmont had donated money to an organization in the Philippines, Help International Ministries, that was helping their community rebuild after a devastating flood. The organization is primarily run by a family of missionaries from Montana that have lived in the Antipolo Area (25km outside of Manila) for the past 24 years and they run a birthing center and a baby home (orphanage) up the hill from the community that was devastated. We stayed with them and got to witness firsthand how much their work has and continues to change the lives of so many.
The first day we were there we got a tour of the birthing center which is basically a prenatal and birthing clinic in an old home. When we arrived a baby had just been born and another was born the previous night. Along with that excitement there were around 30 pregnant women in the backyard attending 1 of 9 clinics offered, ranging from breastfeeding to child care. We then went next door to the baby home and saw the children there (some of whom are surrendered at the birthing clinic and some come from social services) and were given our task for the next two days...painting the gate. After we went to the store to buy the paint we began scraping the old paint off with the help of 2 of the missionaries' children, Auden and Bernadette (she was adopted by them from the baby home).
Those are all of the baby diapers drying on clothes lines.
And then we got to painting!
After a full day of working in the sun Matt took all of us, including some of the neighbor children, out to dinner at their favorite restaurant, Balaw Balaw. Before stopping for dinner we drove to a lookout point so that we could get a better view of the city.
Nelly and Berndatte...I love her!
The restaurant is also a gallery of the owner (now deceased) who is a national artist. Before eating we wandered around and saw the higantes. Read about them
here.
At the restaurant we had delicious traditional filipino food (sorry, I can't remember the names of what we ate!) This dish is yellow rice surrounded by fish, chicken, pork, squid, crab, shrimp, salty eggs, mussels, okra, eggplant and another local green. We finished the dinner of with leche flan and
Halo-Halo. Halo diet when I get home!
The next morning we were out of the door at 7:00am so that we could go and see the work that the community had done to rebuild from the flood. We took a jeepney and a trike to get there. It really rounded out our Philippines experience! Each jeepney owner paints his however he likes. We saw lots of bald eagles and american flags airbrushed on.
Do you think our trike driver was a bit young? And I am betting on the fact that he was born in the birthing center.
The money that the Nelson's church donated helped to rebuild the walkways along the creek, rebuild the foundation and install the hand rails and street lights.
After we were done seeing what amazing work they had done, we walked back up the hill to finish our fence!
Look how pretty it turned out! It will eventually have the handprints of the little kids in the home painted on it, however we ran out of time so another group coming in a few weeks will finish it for us.
We then went inside and played with the kids who range in age from about 4 months to 5 years. I may have shed a tear when a one year old came and sat on my lap and nuzzled her head in my chest for 15 minutes. Or when after kids were scared of Nelly, a nine month old crawled onto his lap and just stared at him like he was the best thing on earth. And I definitely may have shed a tear as we flew away last night. To say the least, the Philippines stole a little piece of my heart and without a doubt I know that I will return.
As an aside: Help International Ministries is doing amazing work and I was in awe and humbled by how they have dedicated their lives to the community. Please check out their website or facebook page to see for yourselves. http://www.helpintl.org/. If you have a few extra dollars to donate, those little babies and expectant mothers would greatly benefit!
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