Bethesda Independent Baptist Church Youth Camp/Payatas Bible Clubs & Feedings, Quezon City (Friday/Saturday)
Today’s update brought to you by Mrs. Cirone and Cave–thank you for your insights!
Friday
Friday morning we left Tarlac early for a 2+ hour drive to Quezon City and had breakfast on the way at Krispy Kreme. We made it to the church to help with day 2 of a youth day camp which started after 9 am and went through around 3:00 pm. In the morning session Lance preached in the afternoon session Logan preached with an interpreter. Team members all were assigned to the 5 different teams and led games, songs, a skit that Samuel directed. Afterwards, we were able to check into our hotel rooms. We enjoyed an amazing Filipino meal at the church for dinner.
Saturday
Saturday morning, we got up early and met at the Tulabot’s church for breakfast. After a quick meeting, we broke up into 7 groups and headed to Payatas for Bible clubs and to give out food. Payatas is basically a big dumpsite. Many garbage trucks will collect and dump their trash to this dumpsite. A lot of the garbage trucks come from the big cities like Quezon City and the surrounding metro Manila areas. A town has been built around the dumpsite which inhabitants will live off whatever they can find in the dump such as recyclables, leftover food, junk, etc. They will use this to either sell or actually use for daily living. Also, it is not uncommon to see young teenage girls with babies as they try to earn money by propositioning themselves. It is a very sad situation because this is where a lot of the Filipino families will live there for their rest of their lives. The children that are born in Payatas–this is what they will grow up on.
One of the ministry of the Tulabots is to have a feeding ministry in Payatas once a week. The team and I have joined the feeding ministry to help set up Bible clubs throughout Payatas. We had 7 groups with each group given one Filipino helper to help with translating. The ladies were able to share Bible stories while us guys helped with songs, giving out candies, and crowd control. We wanted to share Biblical food as well as physical food. After the Bible clubs, we were able to give out hot chocolate porridge, called Champorado. The kids will grab whatever they can use as a bowl–things like mugs, cups, even plates–anything just to get food. Around 30 kids said that they accepted the Lord as their personal Savior, I mean Wow!! The Lord is good!!! Being around Payatas just reminded us of the plenty and how fortunate we are back in America. These kids have so little but they still are happy–Americans could learn a thing or two from these dear children!
After lunch, we had the afternoon off and went to the Greenhills Shopping Center where one can find many bargain items and even haggling for them (which was fun!) The team ate dinner there, and was given the evening off to help prepare for tomorrow’s Sunday services as well as pack our luggage.
