In the past I have talked about Pearl.   She was the young lady that was helping clean up after the rains from a typhoon.   She was carrying her little brother in her arm and tripped.  To keep from hurting him, she reached out with her free arm to break the fall.

A good idea but it didn’t work.  She snapped her arm above the elbow.   The hospital refused to treat her because her parents didn’t have the money to get it fixed.  Via internet and email, directions were able to be sent that allowed the quack doctor’s bark method to be replaced with locally available materials.

It has healed properly with just a small bump where the break occurred.   It does not slow her down at all.   Contrary to the statement from the hospital, she has not lost the use of it.

Here she is now, a happy young lady full of life.

I have returned from the Philippines where I was able to spend over 3 weeks working at the children’s home, teaching a little over 40 hours in the school and speaking 6 times at the conference.

 

I was not able to take as many pictures this time as the Nikon digital camera quit working and I wasn’t able to repair it for a few days.   My phone was not usable as often as in the past as the electricity was very erratic at the children’s home.   Having said all that, I still have about 850 pictures to sort and start posting.

I hope you will allow me a little time to get these posted and sorted.   I see that I still have over 20 hours left in the upload so there will be little or no pictures in this posting.   All in all, it was a good time.

A short update – –

Lilang, is a girl I mentioned before that had contracted Dengue Fever and was bleeding from the mouth and nose.  Her parents took her to the hospital and they were told that she was going to die.   She was put into a room with around a dozen other dying people and left.   I told Inday, who takes care of the children at the children’s home, to go get the same medicine that she had taken when she had Dengue a few months before and give it to Lilang.   Happily, she recovered.

Lilang a couple weeks ago in front of her house.

Lilang with a tuna that her father caught on his fishing boat.  I had tuna steak less than 3 hours after it was taken out of the water.

Today is Leray’s 3rd birthday.

I was there when she was born.  Here she is at that time.

Last year, Inday called her from playing to take her picture with the webcam on the laptop.

I get amused because she was too busy playing to get her hair combed.

 

Then today, here she is on her third birthday.

She doesn’t know that I will be bringing her a birthday present when I visit there this week.

None of the children know that I am coming so I know they will be surprised.  I have small gifts for all of them.

 

I am anxious to see the children.  They have certainly taken hold of my heart over the years.

I finally got through to the children’s home after about a week of not being able to get through either by phone or online chat.

Last week I had sent some extra money for some work on the wall around the house that keeps the water on the outside.   The water has been coming over the wall and into the house.   To make things worse, it has sewage runoff in it.   The money that I had sent was for materials and I knew that it would be a couple weeks before I had money to send for labor unless we had some unexpected donations.

Last night when I was updated, I found that the work had been completed.   I was surprised since I hadn’t sent money for labor.   Inday explained that two things had happened.

First, several of the children had gotten sick from the contaminated water and had to be taken to the doctor.

Second, a man in the village asked if he could lay the new course of block.  She explained that there wasn’t money to pay him.  He told her that he didn’t have any food for his family and if she would only give him half a kilo of rice a day, he would be happy to lay the block.   He promised that she wouldn’t have to pay for more than 3 days of work, even if it took longer.   She agreed to that and he went to work.   So now the block is one course higher all the way around.

She very hesitantly started to ask a question and then changed the subject a couple times.   Finally, I told her I knew she had a question so please ask.   She wanted to know if there was going to be money to send this week for the daily needs, “not any extra, just the minimum”.     I assured her that while we didn’t have any extra donations, that I would be sending the minimum amount as usual.   I then asked why she was concerned.

She explained that with the sick children and paying for the doctor and the medicine that was needed, she not only didn’t have any money left but also had not had any food for the children for the last two days.   Also, the money that she would have used to pay the electricity had also been used for medical expenses, so she had signed a promissory note with the electric company to extend for two weeks.

I transferred as usual so that she could pick it up in the morning her time and start getting their daily needs and the electric bill paid.   I got a confirmation text from Xoom that it was picked up, so the children are eating again.

It certainly is frustrating when communications are not working as expected.

You can keep up with the happenings at the children’s home in your Facebook feed by liking and following us on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/childrens.hope.90

You may also support the children’s home by going to the following link http://hopehomeandschool.com/index.php/support/

Also, if you share the Facebook postings when you find them interesting, it will help spread the word about our children.

If you would like to hear more about the children’s home, I am available to speak to your church, missions group, or other organization.

I just finished wrapping presents for the children and getting the box packed with the presents and the other needs for the children’s home.

It should be there in time for Christmas, the shipper told me 6-8 weeks.

I would like to thank the Logansport Nazarene church and the Thornhope Community Holiness church for their donations to this project.

A special thank you to Clark Milleman for making the wooden toys.  He was able to do this in spite of his wife, Carmen, being in the rehab facility recovering from her recent illness.

Thanks to all who have helped with this Christmas project.