Day 3

I realize I am setting a dangerous precedent by blogging everyday, but I cannot guarantee it will continue. Surprisingly I am quite homesick, which has taken me completely by surprise. Blogging and Facebooking feels like a connection to home that I need right now so I am going to try and continue. I get online about half the time I try.

So yesterday was Day 3. We went to Santismo which is the Baranguay where the Green Box is. That is Frontline's second campus. It was cool to see it since I had seen all the pictures from Christine, Melissa, and Katlynn's trip last summer where they worked so hard to get the building opened up. Now a year later the campus is growing. We broke up into teams and went into peoples homes from the campus. The students went with Filipino leaders to follow up on responder cards from Church services. Our leaders went with the Campus pastor whose name I can hardly say let alone spell. It sounds like Ariel kind of but less Disney. We went to the home of a man who is on dialysis. He had a job that was paying for it but they stopped. He needs 6000 pesos a week for the treatment which is more than a lot of people make in a year. He did not get the treatment last week because the family did not have the money. We prayed for him to be healed and for God to provide the money for the treatment. Without a miracle he may die before we leave.

We visited some of their small group leaders which they call Lifegroups. Then we went to the home of family that recently lost their home due to eviction. Needless to say this was a very personal visit for me due to my home foreclosure. However I moved into a cushy townhouse. They moved onto a piece of land and are trying to build a house out of scrap parts and timber from a nearby mountain. It takes the dad 20 minutes to walk to the public land on the mountain and than he chops down a tree and carrys it back on his shoulder. This can take hours depending on how big the tree was. Needless to say I didn't offer to arm wrestle him. They are a family of 7 and when I visited their home it was a tin roof with no walls. It was truly the worst living conditions I have ever seen or could imagine. Their oldest high school age daughter was one of the leaders with our students doing outreach to other families. The campus pastor told us the family committed to and were giving money to the church. Even as I type this I feel this burning in my heart. It is contempt for everything that I am and all that I have become. I despise the smell here and the food is pretty bad and I complain about the lack of ice cubes. They have no walls! And give of themselves more freely than I do. Today we go to Baloc which is the dump site and I will see more of the same. It is my sincere pleasure to pray with these people and stand with them in faith. Little do they know they impact me far more than I will ever impact them.

The heat and lack of sleep is taking it's toll on the team but we continue to press on. So far spirits are mostly good as we deal with the heat and nerves and homesickness. Last night some of students sang & played at the Frontline youth group service. I was extremely proud of our students. I miss StuCo - we would rock their socks off (if they wore any).

I have peeked at breakfast and it is another granola bar meal. See you tomorrow, interweb willing.