Mission: Philippines Part I

Over spring break, I co-lead a (mainly) middle school trip to the Philippines. But wait, you ask, weren’t you supposed to go to India? Well, yes, that was the original plan, but as the ministry there is facing a lot of potentially violent opposition from its Muslim neighbors, there was a mutual decision that it was too dangerous for us to go now and take students. So I joined the other school trip that was going to the Philippines. We had four students- three 8th grade girls and one senior girl- and four teachers.

Back: Hannah (12th), Jeana, Esther, Min (8th)

Front: Me, Bethany, Sharon, Emily

Our main purpose for going was to work with Kids International Ministries in their children’s home in Manila. This was intended to be a service trip to introduce the middle school kids to doing ministry/missions work, but I was a bit skeptical when I heard they would mainly be holding babies. I would rather face guns in India than 30 babies in the Philippines. Most the girls did work a lot in the nursery, but I was able to work more with the older kids. As it turns out, the children’s home has 7 babies and about 30 older kids from preschool to about 15 years old. Most were lower elementary age.
We left for the airport right after school on Friday with our group of hyper girls, arriving in Manila around midnight. We stayed in a guesthouse down the street from the children’s home, with students in one room and teachers in another, and a dining room downstairs where the cooks made amazing Filipino and American meals for us. The home is actually outside of Manila in the province of Rizal, in the mountains. The neighborhood it is located in is a squatter village, or shantytown… the people did not have homes per se; they had shacks built out of metal and wood. The first weekend we were there, we were kind of checking things out. We went to a special fundraiser day at Faith Academy, a nice international school for mainly American missionary kids, began our shifts at the children’s home, and then went to the wrong church on Sunday. Yes, the wrong church. The three of us who did not have early morning duty to get the kids ready were told to meet outside at 9am to go to the village church. When we did, the director of the organization showed up and asked if we were going to church with him. When we said yes, he told us to get in his car, and about an hour later, we were in downtown Manila. We went to the huge English-speaking church the missionaries from the organization go to. It is incredibly nice and meets in the top of a mall. About 3000 people go there, mainly Filipinos, but a fair amount of foreigners too. The plus side to accidentally going there was that we got to see some of downtown Manila while driving there, and we got to eat Chili’s with them later for lunch. There are a lot more American restaurants and products in the Philippines than in Korea- in fact, one of the girls bought deodorant as a gift to take back to her family.
Sat and Sun afternoons we began working with the kids at the home. We played with them outside, led games, taught art projects with supplies people had donated to us, read to the kids, and helped them with dinner, chores, and getting to bed. Our group also took charge of the nursery for the week, running shifts of 2-3 people at a time in the morning, afternoon/evening, and all night. Fortunately, because I was with the older kids so much, I did not have to be in the nursery very often. Because our group was helping for so long, the permanent workers were able to take time off while we were there.
This is the end of Part I; be on the lookout for Part II coming soon to a website near you!