Should This Be Reality???

As you may or may not know I am on an 11 month journey God has directed me to, I went with unsure answers but walked in faith. At this point I am in my third month. We have traveled to New Zealand, Australia and now I am in the Philippines. I love it here, each day I have a new adventure and story to tell. I have been heartbroken for the people and lives here. I have a few stories I would like to share with you to give you a glimpse of what we encounter here each day, that truly makes me burn for justice.

As I mentioned in my last blog, we have been doing a census here in the community, trying to connect with over 5,000 people. Every day we ask people what their immediate needs are, they respond with needs of water, food, vitamins and medicine. One family said they just wanted plates to eat their food, another said diapers for their new born baby, and the list goes on. Then we ask for prayer requests, person after person responded with asking for a better life. My heart sank and broke into pieces as I held back the tears. Most houses are made from anything they can find, scraps of old woods, medal and old signs. Holes invade their whole house-I am afraid for when it rains. How will they stay dry? The wires of electricity unsafely stream everywhere. This is what we walk into everyday, one day I was walking through sewage trying to get to some homes and I said to myself, " this is the worst I have seen", but as the day flew by I seemed to be hearing and seeing situations that seemed more hopeless then the next.

I met an eight year old girl named Roxanne. She has one leg and the other is prosthetic. The first encounter with her was with Michelle and David, she was hobbling home from school and they asked if they could carry her home. The prosthesis barley stays on and sits on an angel so her foot is twisted to the right at all times. A couple days ago Michelle and I decided to go see if she would like go to the swing set with us. We got the ok from her mom and carried her down to the set. As we were talking with her trying to get her to a crack smile, I started to think, " If it is for only one person I am here I will be honoured and blessed to serve and love" ( just like Angelica in Australia). We took her to get some ice cream, sat and ate it together, laughing as we smeared the ice cream across our lips as lipgloss. I asked Roxanne her favourite song and she began to sing Jesus loves me. I could not stop smiling; at that point I knew her hope was in Jesus. We brought her home and said our goodbyes and walked away. I kept my tears back, telling her we will come back to color with her soon. I truly believe God is a big God and wants something big to happen in her life. I am praying we can help her as the process is already in play for getting her a new leg. Please keep her in your prayers. This is reality for eight year old Roxanne. Where people, old and young stare at her and point. WE just love and encourage.

One afternoon as I arrived back from a specific village, I was broken and crying out to God. A team works there daily so I went to them to inquire more information. They began telling me a story about a blind eleven year old girl who cannot walk. She lives in a house alone, with her stepmom down the road. She sleeps on a plank of woods as her bed and lies there all day. If she has to go to the bathroom she just goes because there is no one to help her up. Most days they do not know if she eats or not. The team has invested time into her, speaking life and love into her life. A nurse has come to look at her, and they have brought her back to the place we are staying to give her a real bath and clean her up. This is another story that makes me angry and I stand wondering why. I trust this team is doing the best they can. Please pray and ask God to keep intervening to give her a better life. This is reality for this blind eleven year old girl. Abandoned and forgotten.

Another ministry a group is doing is under a bridge where over 100 families live. Families, babies and children living in the garbage dump. They have nothing, each day they dig through the garage hoping to find metal or copper so they can sell it for a little money. Eight years old kids sniff glue so the hunger pains go away. They have been there since the flood in October. They sleep on old piece of carpet or cardboard; they have no water to keep clean, no food, nothing. I wonder why them as anger and frustration boil over inside. This is their home, their reality.

I hope these stories just give you a glimpse of what we see and hear each day. It is not easy coming back to a bed, food and a shower each night, knowing many do not have what we have. It is sad that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. What would happen if the rich invested into the poor? One day we hitch hiked home and a young man picked us up (do not worry we were safe). We hopped into his nice car and he drove us home. He was talking to us with perfect English keeping a good conversation and as he dropped us off he said he lived down the street from where we lived. I wonder how someone can live here without noticing the poverty and do nothing about it. It seemed as if he just closed his eyes and pretended it was not there.

Imagine this; you're in the line for the ATM machine. This time the line is long but you notice people acting weird when they get to the front. When you approach the front of the line you see an eight year old boy passed out from alcohol right before the ATM. What has been happening this entire time is people see the boy, step over him to get to the ATM, finish their business and walk away. How would you react? What would you do?



This story happened to one of the ministry workers here in the Philippines. As he approached the boy, he picked him up; made sure he was breathing and brought him to the police to contact his parents. Before this act everyone ignored the boy, as if this was normal but when did something like this become normal?

Please be praying. This is reality for many but the question is- should this be reality? Should this be normal? Living in the garbage dump, being walked over, living in homes no bigger than our bathrooms as nine people sleep there, being abandoned blind at the age of eleven, sniffing glue to take away the hunger pain at age eight. Having no education, water, plates to eat off of, the list just goes on. THIS IS NOT OK and not suppose to be normal. Please be praying and lift these situations up to God. Pray from the depth of who you are, with passion and fight for justice, intercede for these lives with me.

I am humbled, broken, blessed to serve here in Cainta, Manila. As for prayer requests please lift me up whenever you think about me; each day seems to get harder, battling with the hard unknown answers of injustice.

Written By: Charlotte Clark