Week 6

Our construction team has just started their sixth week of construction! The building is beginning to look as if it will actually become a functional building and my hopes are started to get high for the time when we will see girls living there!

My increasingly large list of jobs I never thought I would have has "Project Manager" at the top. But I am learning from it, and the people I've found to work for the project are an incredible asset. They each believe in our ministry and understand the time crunch we are under to get the building completed. As a result, we might actually finish BEFORE the deadline. (If any of you know Philippine culture, you can appreciate how truly astounding that thought is!!)

Anyway, I wanted to show all of our faithful supporters what the progress looks like thus far, I know it's been awhile since I updated.

This first building (and phase one of our construction project) is our "Transition House." Eventually, when  the rest of our facility is built, it will be used as a home for older girls and women who don't have a safe or appropriate home to reintegrate into. Girls can use this home as a base while they finish their education or get a job to save money for when they move out on their own.

At first, this building will be used as the center of our entire program. It will give us space to set up two "families" of 5-6 girls each. Each "Family" will have it's own house mothers so that when the lower campus is finished, they can transfer directly into the small bungalows that will be built for that purpose.

If you want to learn more about our program, you can view this interview I did for our partner organization "Conspiracy of Hope."

Thanks for all your prayers and support!

Oh the habits...

I've recently begun to realize that some of my habits scream loudly that I don't live in the US anymore. If you care to learn more about them, here goes...

1. When I drive, my hand is constantly resting on my horn, at all times, just in case a goat or a child or another car decide to jump out in front of me.

2. Sometimes, when I throw things away (like a pen that doesn't work, or a shampoo bottle) I find myself wondering how the scavenger that digs it out will use it. Sometimes I even throw things away that aren't QUITE garbage yet and say to myself "that's going to make somebody's day."

3. I usually only eat about 1/2 cup rice at a meal. I can never eat less than 1 cup without receiving comments about being on a diet though.

4. When I'm in the states, I have to stop myself from throwing my toilet paper in the garbage. I am usually perplexed when there is no trash can next to the toilet.

5. Today I wore a scarf because it was "cold." It might have gotten down to 70 degrees (f). Probably not though.

6. In the mornings before my alarm goes off, I will usually turn off the fan and wrap myself in a blanket for 30min-1 hour in order to get warm enough  to stand the cold shower I have to get in before I leave for work.

7. I've become a fan of 3-in-1 (coffee), and I actually call it "coffee."

8. I no longer am surprised when pets eat rice.

9. I will postpone life events if it rains.

10. I will take every opportunity I can to eat with my hands (it's only really fun if it's Filipino food though).

I'm sure there are more, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

So Many Thanks

This Christmas has been a whirlwind of seeing delightful people and being shocked by generosity; over and over and over again. I have a lot to be thankful for this year.

It would be too time consuming to list everyone here who has amazed me, so instead I'm going to tell a story.

I work really closely with a Pastor named Noel, and his wife, Lois. Pastor Noel has been a God-sent, over and over again, especially as I've tried to wade through construction and legal decisions concerning My Refuge House and our new property. In Mid-November, they called me and informed me that Lois's niece, Rejoice, was in the hospital. They asked if I could donate blood, and if I knew of anyone else who could donate blood to off-set some of the hospital bill. So I started asking friends if they could also donate blood.

Rejoice after her Surgery

Let me just preface this to say, I've been in the Philippines long enough to know that there are a never ending amount of needs that come up, and I rarely ask people for help, especially financial assistance. But Pastor Noel has been such an amazing help to the ministry of MRH, that I had to help, even if it was just donating blood. Pastor Noel's niece, Rejoice, has a condition called "Arteriovenous Malformation." It's a condition that certain people are born with, and usually go through their entire life without having any complications. In Rejoice's case, the condition had caused her nerves to sever in her jaw, and she would bleed, literally liters of blood. Without Surgery, Rejoice risked bleeding to death. Her family had given all the money they had, and even sold property to pay for the bills, but the bills were just too high, and they couldn't do anything more to help. They were faced with having to send Rejoice home, without the surgery, to eventually bleed to death. 

My friends, my little family in Cebu, saw the situation, and jumped up to help. In fact, when I left for the states, they continued to make sure that everything was in place and even fronted the cost for this very expensive medical procedure. That, along with the generous donations I received from other people who've been touched by Pastor Noel, literally saved the life of Rejoice. You can read all about the rest of the details on my friend's blogs:

Lindsey: http://www.lindsayincebu.blogspot.com
Bethany:http://failingtofindsuccess.blogspot.com/
Amy:http://amylouiseco.blogspot.com

Merry Christmas Everyone. I hope you are thankful for you health, for your life, and for the people that surround you. Most importantly, I hope you were able to make a difference in someone's life this year.

Here's a Christmas "Family Photo" of my Little Cebu Family (minus me, I was already on my way to the states).
Left to Right: Bethany, Francis, Lindsay, Ali and Amy

The anatomy of a fence

So, I don't know much about construction, on any continent.  But from what I've observed, the process in the Philippines is a bit different than in the US. Here's pictorial documentation of the process of our fence being constructed. Enjoy!

Chatter Mag

I recently wrote an article for Chatter Magazine (A publication of Irving Bible Church)

Thanks Chatter Mag and IBC for being so faithful in partnering with us in our fight against human trafficking! Read the article here: http://www.chattermag.com/trafficking-in-the-philippines/

or here:

The facts are staggering. But the reality is much worse. The reality is there are individuals in the Philippines — women, girls, even men and boys at times — whose lives have been given so little regard that they now consider themselves worth nothing more than for what they are bought or sold. Individuals with dreams like finishing school and being happily married now believe they never have the hope of attaining their dreams.

So what about this conglomeration of more than 7,000 islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean makes it susceptible to human trafficking? Although some of the most beautiful island destinations in the world can be found here, so can extreme amounts of abject poverty. With 26 percent of families (many of which have more than five children) living on less than $300 a year, desperation is bound to exist.

However, not all impoverished nations have such high numbers of trafficking victims. Trafficking exists where it is not prosecuted, and the Philippines have historically turned a blind eye to this atrocity. However, new efforts are arising, including a three year partnership signed on August 19, 2010, between the Philippine government and U.S. government for better investigation, prosecution and conviction of human traffickers.

However, even with the renewed efforts of the government, there is a shortage of places victims, once rescued, can go to find protection or support to start a new life. According to the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report 2010, “The government’s capacity to provide shelter and protection is severely limited due to inadequate budgets, and there are regular instances where victims are unable to access government protection services.”

My Refuge House (MRH) started in 2008 to help meet the need for victims to experience safety in the midst of turmoil. Since that time, more than 20 young women have found hope and healing through its short term rehabilitation program. Hope for achieving their dreams again. And healing to believe they are worth more than what some person decided they should be worth.

One former victim said she liked MRH because the staff taught her how to read and she knew she would never go hungry while she was there. Another said she appreciated the staff for being so caring and understanding of her situation. Both girls have moved on, pursuing those dreams that seemed so far out of reach last year.

My Refuge House has begun construction on a new facility but is still in the process of raising money for the completion of that facility. The rental facility previously used, can no longer meet the needs of the program. Please consider partnering with this ministry and helping others, like the girls mentioned in this story, find hope and healing in their lives.

Salamat (Thank you)

I wanted to share a letter one of the girls made for all the staff at My Refuge House right before she left. It is a thank you poster. In summary, it says "Thank you for teaching me how to read and write, and thank you for loving me even when I had a very bad attitude."

One life at a time.

A Bottle of Coke

Laws for squatters (persons who settle on land that is not legally theirs) can be ironclad here. Often the owner of the land will lose considerable amounts of money because the "squatters" refuse to leave without a settlement, and, by law, they don't have to. There are fires, almost weekly, in Cebu, usually in squatter areas, because owners get fed up with the people not leaving and just burn them to the ground.

It can be very frustrating on both ends. For the owner of the property, and the "squatters" on the property.  180,842 families, or 12.8 percent of the population in my region of the Philippines (The Visayas) are technically squatters (2004 report). And even though the laws are frustrating for my end of the population, that is a huge number of persons who would otherwise be homeless, and the injustice of that, is much more frustrating. 

 squatter home with the boats and pier in background

Last month I visited one of the most devastated districts in Cebu. It's an area, by one of the piers, whose tenants earn their living by scavenging in and around the pier area. They were squatters, but had built homes and lived by the pier for many years, some for many generations. Their homes had been demolished to build a shipping warehouse, and they became, by definition, displaced peoples. This community of around 15 families, couldn't leave the area, which supplied the only livelihood they knew, so they moved into a pile of old shipping/building materials. Literally. Tarps and sheet metal had been placed on top of cement drums to form make-shift structures that I had trouble believing would hold up during a storm.

The team I went with to this area was a Catholic Ministry called SVD who UNICEF has partnered with to do a joint project in providing aid to some of the neediest families. The workers go into these communities weekly and help the families get birth certificates for their children, make sure the children are in school, and try to provide assistance to help the kids stay in school. They also pass out condoms. Because, as you can imagine, sex brings in money. Sometimes more money than scavenging, but not always.

Lights from shopping district seen behind

Someone in this particular community informed the worker that her neighbors will sometimes sell their bodies for a liter of coke. One liter of coke. Many of the girls who are participating in these activities are very young, barely teenagers. The position of SVD in this area is that they will not convince someone to disengage from income generating activities unless they have another job to offer them. In the face of such devastation, they believe, asking them to stop these activities will only shame them when they have no other means. So they offer jobs, whenever they can. But that isn't often. There aren't a lot of jobs for those without resources.

As we walked back towards the city lights in the dusk, two persons heard us and stepped out from behind a structure, hoping we were customers. When they saw who it was they were embarrassed, but the SVD workers didn't even react. They treated them with the same love and dignity they would have treated their family members with.

The definition of trafficking is this: the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use by force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving and receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.


By this definition, anyone who buys these persons, with full knowledge that they have no other means for providing for themselves or their family, is trafficking them.


How does someone get to a place where they believe that their body is only worth a liter of coke? How does someone ever become that desperate? And how do you teach, love, care for, convince, empower or show someone that they are worth more?

They are worth much more.

Breaking Ground

The construction has officially begun!

We broke ground on Monday, September 13th, 2010. The fencing contractor has been hired and the fence is currently going up! Here's a picture of Pastor Noel, the secretary of our local board and I doing the official ground breaking (It's a good thing I'm not actually part of the construction crew... It took me way to long to dig a scoop of dirt!)

Here's a picture of the whole crew in attendance. It includes our contractor, architect, government engineers, government officials, and IJM staff. 

Pastor Noel gave a short service and we Thanked God for the provision of this land and everything it will be used for. Then we had a gigantic meal complete with Lechon (a roasted pig). 

It was the perfect way to begin our mission!

Hanging Rice

Last week I went to Lorega, a district of town known for it's pig slaughter house, drugs, and some of the most extreme poverty in the city. I went with a church ministry from the area that visits families there weekly. We walked down the road, and turned into a pathway that was only about a foot wide and whose walls were stained with every imaginable toxic substance. This path looked like it might lead to a sewer or an outhouse. Instead, it took us to a small community of homes that were situated in and around a cemetery.

One of the women we talked to said she had been living in this community since she was born, 35 years ago, and her mother had lived there before that. The homes were literally stacked on top of and all around above-ground grave sites. People were sitting on top of graves as if they were park benches, smoking cigarettes and laughing at each others jokes. Children playing with handmade toys in front of the deceased whose living relations had long since forgotten about them.

This may seem kind of weird for Americans, but the weirdest thing to me is this: Filipinos are terrified of cemeteries and typically avoid them at all cost. A local Pastor who was coming along on this trip for the first time was amazed, and said he'd never seen anything like it. But it's survival of the fittest in these parts, desperate times call for desperate measures, and (insert survival cliche here).

The same woman who has lived in this cemetery her entire life was working intently at weaving with her mother. They were weaving little pods that are used to cook rice in, and it makes individual servings. It is called "Puyo" or Hanging Rice, because when it is sold, the Rice is hung up for people to buy from the vender. The two women sit on the graves for around 5 hours a day, making these little pods. Together, they can construct about 300 of them in that amount of time. Later they will sell all 300 for 21 pesos. 21 pesos a day is the entire income for this family. $0.46 American cents.

As you can imagine, this area is also known for trafficking. Some families would rather try to sell their children than spend five hours weaving for a almost no profit. It doesn't make it right, obviously, but it's the reality.

(finished product: multiple cooked Puyo in a bowl, ready to break open and eat)

It's important for us to see where the clients are coming from. It's important to know what is driving them and their families towards decisions that seem unthinkable and outrageous. It's important to know what we are up against. We can't save all of Lorega. But we can make a difference for some. One life at a time.

Another goodbye

I've been saying good bye to friends a lot lately. Part of living in an international community means people come and go quite frequently. I'm not a huge fan of good byes. Most people aren't, I guess, but we make plans that may or may not ever happen to meet up again, somewhere in the world, and they seem a little more bearable.

Two weeks ago, I had to say a different kind of goodbye. A kind of goodbye that, no matter how good of a planner I am, I cannot hope to meet up again, in this world.

When I began working for IJM, Charito (or Ate Cha-- Older sister Cha) sat next to me in the social work section of the office. Ate Cha had an incredible ability to make people feel loved within seconds of meeting them. She was the first to reach out to me and take me under her wing. She translated for me when I could not understand the conversation, she filled me in on background information and inside jokes, she laughed and sang and joked and hugged and shared food with everyone around, most of the day. There wasn't anyone who didn't feel loved by this amazing woman.

Ate Cha had been battling cancer for 5 years. Her husband is a pastor in a village on another island, but she was so dedicated to the work of IJM that none of these things mattered. She poured her heart and soul into her interactions with clients, and many of them loved her like the mother they never had. When I would go on visits with her, I would watch their faces light up when she walked in the room; they also knew what it meant to experience the love of this amazing woman.

A few months ago, Ate Cha left IJM in order to take care of her health. But she didn't really stop working. She volunteered at different organizations and worked in her husbands church. Even though we knew she had cancer, no one really believed she was sick... she just never stopped giving.

However, the cancer that was in her lymph nodes spread to her bone marrow, and although she tried chemo again, her body just couldn't take anymore. She left the world peacefully, just closed her eyes and passed on. A fight well fought.

Please pray for Ate Cha's husband, 3 children, one grandson, and countless friends, as they transition into a life without their loved one.

And may we all fight a fight worth fighting for, and be able to rest peacefully for a job well done.