It's easy to take teeth for granted. When I was young, my teeth were OK, but in the socioeconomic world of my childhood, dental care was taken seriously and was preventative. In order to prevent future problems, I had braces for awhile and then did the whole retainer process, eventually
transitioning completely out of orthodontics. Now my teeth are great, I guess, nice and straight and all that and no major problems. However, for the kids at the home, the same is not true. They have not had the benefit of growing up in a world where dental care is taken seriously, or where it can even be afforded. That's why these kids usually show up with some collection of rotten, broken teeth; if we are lucky, they are still young enough where they will all fall out anyway and we can start again with a clean slate on their adult teeth. Many of you are probably familiar with Maricel's dental story since coming to the home - her teeth used to be horribly disfigured and not much could be done, but a generous gift was given to fix her teeth, so now she has a prosthetic replacement in the front. That kind act did everything to boost the confidence and personality of a girl who already has enough struggles communicating. Now, our newest "Maricel" is Noel. Noel is a newer member at the home, having come in September 08. We were told at first that he was probably around 7 years old, but there was no definite birthday since he was abandoned at birth. However, we were all very suspicious of that when we met him and saw his teeth. He has huge teeth, and one of his oversized front ones protrudes awkwardly out of his mouth. A recent round of dental check-ups and pictures shows all kinds of other problems in there. It also tells us that he is more like 10 years old. Noel struggles with developmental delay and has received inadequate care for his whole life up until now. We want to change things for him and give him the kind of attention he deserves, especially his teeth. He will need braces, which are cheaper here than in the States, but expensive nonetheless. There is already a children's ministry program from a church in Minnesota ready to start collecting money for Noel. If you are interested in helping as well, please let us know. We would like to get this taken care of as soon as possible for him.
transitioning completely out of orthodontics. Now my teeth are great, I guess, nice and straight and all that and no major problems. However, for the kids at the home, the same is not true. They have not had the benefit of growing up in a world where dental care is taken seriously, or where it can even be afforded. That's why these kids usually show up with some collection of rotten, broken teeth; if we are lucky, they are still young enough where they will all fall out anyway and we can start again with a clean slate on their adult teeth. Many of you are probably familiar with Maricel's dental story since coming to the home - her teeth used to be horribly disfigured and not much could be done, but a generous gift was given to fix her teeth, so now she has a prosthetic replacement in the front. That kind act did everything to boost the confidence and personality of a girl who already has enough struggles communicating. Now, our newest "Maricel" is Noel. Noel is a newer member at the home, having come in September 08. We were told at first that he was probably around 7 years old, but there was no definite birthday since he was abandoned at birth. However, we were all very suspicious of that when we met him and saw his teeth. He has huge teeth, and one of his oversized front ones protrudes awkwardly out of his mouth. A recent round of dental check-ups and pictures shows all kinds of other problems in there. It also tells us that he is more like 10 years old. Noel struggles with developmental delay and has received inadequate care for his whole life up until now. We want to change things for him and give him the kind of attention he deserves, especially his teeth. He will need braces, which are cheaper here than in the States, but expensive nonetheless. There is already a children's ministry program from a church in Minnesota ready to start collecting money for Noel. If you are interested in helping as well, please let us know. We would like to get this taken care of as soon as possible for him.On a separate note, good news out of the legislature here in the Philippines - the president just finally signed into law a bill that has been pushed through the government by the Department of Social Welfare and social workers who want to see the way abandoned kids' cases are handled revised. Up until now, children who were abandoned and in residential care like ours had to go through a whole battery of legal proceedings before being officially declared abandoned by the courts and ready to move on to permanent family placing through adoption. What was designed to be a thorough process to protect the kids and make sure they were not becoming victims of trafficking has turned into a long exhaustive process that ultimately ends up keeping untold numbers of kids stuck in institutions across the Philippines. This new bill successfully takes the responsibility away from the backlogged courts and puts it in the hands of the Department of Social Welfare alone, making the job of processing the kids' cases so much easier for our social workers.
DJ/Rachel
Short-term teams continue to converge and transform our landscape. In Manila, over the past three months we have been helping a local church get back on its feet. In turn, their building, facility and yard area have provided us community outreach opportunities we only dreamed about in the past. The combined effort of a few teams and some donations has resulted in hundreds of children previously seen playing in the streets of our community are now seen running and playing on grass, swinging from trees and enjoying the sports of basketball, volleyball, soccer and badminton. To take advantage of these facilities, all kids and adults attend a Bible study prior to each time of play. A new energy level has overtaken the place, and the pastors and lay people alike have jumped in to help. What a blessing for us to be involved in the local body! We are praying that more teams from schools, youth groups, friends, and churches will join us in 2009!
In Mindanao over 100 short-term team members from Australia and the United States have joined forces and literally allowed us to build two more of the eight living units on our donated property near Malaybalay, Bukidnon, Mindanao. The teams have welded, poured concrete, done plumbing, electrical work, and carpentry. The first unit is ready to move into. We are pushing hard to complete sections 2, 3 and 4 in the first quarter of this year. Our camp site is developing as well. We have aspirations of hosting a camp for impoverished kids with a group of Faith Academy students and staff on March 14-20! Please pray that this could happen. Also pray for Jeremy and Sarah Moody and their three young boys to finish up their support raising and join our team in Mindanao this month. In addition to building structures, roads, septic tanks, fences, etc., we also get a chance to build lives. God is so gracious to allow us to take part in these opportunities. Each day our kids in the homes go through struggles. They cry and share with their NFFCH aunts and uncles. Many times our community people come to us for jobs, advice, medicines or food. What a blessing to be in a position to find solutions. One such person recently entered our life—17-year-old Irene. Irene came to us with full-blown tuberculosis, two failing lungs, six months pregnant and a heart defect from birth. We loved on her, the doctors loved on her and in the end this brave heart gave birth to a little girl weighing less than three pounds. Praise God, the yet-to-be-named child is still alive and with God's leading will have a life ahead of her in our home. Sadly Irene lost her battle as so many of the impoverished people do. We are uncertain of Irene's eternal destination, but to honor her life we want to give her baby what Irene rarely had the chance for—knowledge of a Savior, a loving home, clean water, a safe bed to sleep in at night and more. Keep praying we will be found faithful in caring for the widows and orphans for which we have been called to help.
God takes us through a great journey called life. For most of the time we don’t know where it’s going or leading. The path itself is not important. The important part of the journey is the relationship we develop along the way with God.
As I invest my life in the lives of many children here in the Philippines, my prayer is to promote an atmosphere of trust, health, safety and love for the many children God may bring our way. Mt prayer is to invest in their young lives as they in turn give back to God their given talents and abilities to Him for the further development of their people
These pictures show community members utilizing the 'new' space that has been created by the hard working friends from 
Today God has lifted the leadership spirits and we are looking forward to future partnership, including the building of playground equipment in their spacious well shaded yard, a couple of rooms in their building will house our community school-grades 3-6 someday, kids from the streets are coming in for Bible study basketball games,our staff will be enrolling in a course, '" how to study the Bible"and their building although far from being 100% sound is on the mend....
All of the babies have amazing stories, but I am going to share Heartlyn's with you. Her story is such a clear picture of God working miracles, I still get chills thinking about it. We got Heartlyn late in the afternoon on September 30, 2008. She seemed to be drinking fine, though it was obvious that she was not used to being fed the right kind of milk. The very next day all the new children were taken to a newborn screening, just to see if they had anything extremely wrong with them. Heartlyn did not come back from the screening. She was so sick that she was taken to the hospital right away. She has green feces and green goop coming out of her eyes: the doctor said that she had an infection, but they were not yet sure of how bad it was. It turns out that her white blood cell count was so high that she could not even survive normally. As well as the infection, Heartlyn also had Pneumonia and at least 3 other sicknesses. The doctors said that she probably would not be coming home for months.
Meet Alexandra. She is one of the newest arrivals at New Faith Family Children's Home, having come on the last day of September with her two younger siblings Tyra (2) and Chris John (1). The other two have plenty to say about them as well, but this is about the big sister - a picture of the kind of children we often care for. She is not orphaned or abandoned. But she comes from a very difficult home life. Maybe she is 7 or 8 years old, we are not sure. She is surprisingly big though; maybe it's survival of the fittest - her siblings are undersized with far more health issues.
A year ago over twenty middle school kids were stranded at the Manila airport. They had just arrived and were suppose to head up north to minister however a typhoon shut down all travel and thus the call came to our children's home wondering if we could put these young adventurers to work. We did and a year later this same school has sent over administrators , two other work teams, and countless blessings for the homes in Manila and Malaybalay.. The middle school teams from their school arrive again next Monday!
Two years ago a team of aspiring workers showed up from Minnesota with a young couple named DJ and Rachel Langefels leading the team. A year ago this couple had enough of short term experiences and came to give their lives to God while working with our Manila children's home. This past couple of weeks the core group of the Minnesota team from 06 arrived again. After finishing their time one person wrote about the amazing change that had occurred in the lives of the kids and how impressed they were with DJ and Rachel's role and how they were being used by God!
The kids are also enjoying having the team around, new friends to play with who have an immeasurable amount of energy for them. There are basketball games every day, card games, puzzles to play with, they are definitely enjoying their new companions. It is easy to fall in love with the children here and the world race team has experienced that first hand.
