Saturday, June 9, 2018—Bethesda Independent Baptist Church: Payatas Feeding Ministry, Youth Rally, Fellowshipping with the Tulabots
1 John 3:17, “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?”
Food – Throughout our entire trip, this morning’s ministry and location was something we greatly looked forward to but didn’t look forward to. This morning, our team would be heading to the Payatas Landfill. Each week, Pastor Tulabot and the teens from their Children’s Home would head into the Payatas area to conduct several Bible clubs and then give the children food. We knew this would be a bitter-sweet opportunity as we all had developed a love for the Filipino children but yet could not imagine the conditions we would be in and the poverty we would see.
Years ago, the people actually lived on the sides of the landfill until tragedy struck in 2000 when in the early hours of the morning, the mountain of garbage eroded burying people in their homes as they slept. In total, 232 people were killed and over 600 families instantly became homeless. Since that time, the government has outlawed people actually going into the landfill but yet everyday little children jump (known as jumpers) on the passing garbage trucks before they dump their garbage in order to try to pull out anything they could sell for money. We heard other stories of young girls offering themselves to the garbage truck drivers to make a little money. Therefore, it was not uncommon to see a girls ages 11-13 carrying around a baby. Of course, hearing these stories and seeing the incredible poverty broke our hearts but yet made us even more determined to show these children the true love of Jesus Christ.
Before going into the landfill community, we stopped by and visited with the children at the Children’s Home in Payatas. They really enjoyed our company especially as we made animal balloons and played games with them. Then, Pastor Tulabot broke our group up into several smaller groups and began dropping us off at various places where we walked down narrow passage ways only to find a slight clearing between the houses and shanties in order to hold a Bible club. In each one of our groups, we had someone lead or teach the children songs, teach a Bible lesson (through a Tagalog interpreter), and then were able to dish out their food which today was chocolate rice soup. As the children showed up one by one, they brought along anything that would hold the food we were about to give them. Although this morning it was raining, Pastor Tulabot mentioned that upwards to 500 children come out every Saturday to the feeding ministry. Overall, the time this morning was a wonderful blessing but very impactful on all our lives. As Americans, we have so much and yet still complain about the things we don’t have–shame on us!
Fun – After the morning feeding at Payatas and eating lunch together at the local Dominos Pizza, we began preparing for our afternoon Youth Rally to be held back at the church. They had invited the children and teens from the Children’s Home at Bethesda Independent Baptist Church as well as the children from Payatas who would be arriving in jeepneys. All in all there were about 50-60 kids/teens in attendance as Cave and Tim led the game time, Brennan led the singing, and Cave preached a great message on God’s love and forgiveness. Of course as we have done throughout our trip, we tried our Tagalog introductions one more time in front of everyone. After the message, we handed out some snacks and spent the rest of the time having fun and fellowship with them. We had a great time and believe everyone present also enjoyed themselves and most importantly heard a clear presentation of the Gospel.
Fellowship – For the evening, our plan was to spend the remaining time with the Tulabots as they have been “given to hospitality” in treating us so well. We all loaded up into their van and headed down to the SM Mall to eat and do our last minute souvenir shopping. PS: Hope you like what we bought you as Filipino sizing and American sizing is quite different with, unfortunately, Americans taking the more “mature” sizes! :0) As we arrived back at our motel dormitory, we began packing to prepare for our 5:00 am departure to Manila to catch our plane to Los Angeles. In looking back on this day, we had a terrific day of ministry outreach and most importantly were ministered to ourselves by what we experienced as truly our eye affected our hearts!
Blessings to All,
Team Philippines
