This week was so full! I can’t imagine every week will be quite like this past one. I think the Leiningers are trying to introduce us to as many projects/possibilities as they can, which is great. Our first visit this week was to Gentle Hands, an NGO that serves as an orphanage and safe place for abused children. They will literally swoop them off the street if they see children in need. The good news is that these children genuinely seem very happy here and so relieved to be out of their terrible past lives. Also, most children do eventually get adopted, mostly by families in the U.S. and Europe. They keep to schedules, have fun things like ballet lessons and the the boys used to have Tai Kwon Do. They have dedicated workers, especially the director, Charity Graff. She is currently “home schooling” about 140 children, which she started doing during the pandemic. We are hoping to provide them with a RACHEL server so the students will have access to a lot educational content without having to use the internet. We are hopeful that we will be able to develop some projects to help them. We were uplifted by these kids! And their singing just melted our hearts!

The next day, we went back to Mabuhay Deseret, where they house patients who are either waiting for surgeries or recovering from surgeries. The senior missionaries provide music and a craft or other project for them a couple of times a month. The parents were enthusiastically joining in.

On Thursday, we went to Cardinal Sin Village, which is in Manila. This is a village that was created by the government to house squatters along the river. So for the past 15 years, people have lived here instead of squatting along the river. It was actually not as bleak as I expected. We went up on the roof to see the condition of the water tanks (which are terrible and most of them aren’t working). We also found the roof needs to be repaired and is leaking into the top floor’s apartments. It seems unreal that the government doesn’t take better care of their people. That’s why they come to charitable organizations like LDS Charities. It was a very good visit and we are truly hoping we can get water to all the people here.

One last experience for this busy, interesting, varied week was a trip to San Carlos, which was a two hour drive, to attend a vision screening. We went with two other humanitarian couples, the Leiningers and the Haynes to go help with the vision screening through Mabuhay Deseret. There were other medical groups there doing screenings as well, so it was very busy. It was held in the court area of a mall.

As you can see, we learned how to use the refraction machine! (But I wasn’t very good at it. After we finished our screening, we took a little drive and ended up taking a spontaneous trip down the Pagsanjan River (we didn’t have time to go to the falls). We stopped in a parking area, asked how we could see the river and the next thing we knew, we were sitting in a couple of old rickety fishing boats, heading down the river! It was so great to be out in a little bit more country.

We also toured a hospital which I found very depressing, but I guess it isn’t as bad as the truly rural hospitals. We got a kick out of their packages. Especially the dog bite treatment package! They said they get around 30-50 dog bite patients a day! Yikes!