Sir, Sir are you alive??

So right now I am sitting on the couch in my apartment with my roommate, safe!  But I didn’t feel so safe about 45 minutes ago, based on what just happened.  Amy and I left the movie theater around midnight tonight and were driving home.  Now let me set the scene:  Bad weather happened today so there is debris all over the roads, random trees down, lots of lightning and just an eery feeling in the air.  Amy is driving her car in front of me and I am behind her driving the dark back roads of Rocky Ridge Road – a curvy dark road that is taking us home.  We get onto Cahaba River Road (which is not usually the way I go home), another dark and curvy road, and as I pass a neighborhood that has one little street lamp, I see it……..a BODY.  Seriously!  It was like a bad horror movie moment.  I am following 3 cars that are ahead of me and none of them have seen the old man laying on the side of the road, BUT I DID.  So I slow down and call Amy.  She picks up, “Amy did you just see that body laying on the side of the road”?  ”No, WHAT?  WHERE?”  At that moment we turn around at a stop light and proceed to go back.  Now let me stop here:  I don’t freak out, I am a pretty calm person, I have stopped many times at a road accident to help, these things don’t freak me out.

HOWEVER….as I pull up to the entrance of this dark neighborhood, lit only by one street light, I see a lifeless body of an older gentleman laying on his back on the grass with his feet in the road.  His hands are bent up and his mouth was open.  ”Oh God, I think to myself, he is dead”.  My heart was pounding out of my chest.  I have seen dead bodies before but not like this.  I start yelling, “Sir, Sir are you alive”, “Sir are you okay”, “hey wake up sir”.  Reality sets in, he is not moving.  So I call 911 which is a whole other blog in and of itself because our 911 system is ridiculous!  After trying to explain where I am, Amy has gone up to the guy and starts yelling in his face.  And then I see it – HIS ARM MOVES.  AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!  Oh gosh, okay he is alive, but what in the world.  A few yells later, we realize that MIKE is drunk and has walked from the LaQuinta inn to this neighborhood (WHICH IS ABOUT 10 MILES AWAY DOWN THE BUSY 280 HIGHWAY).  

After waking up and having a pretty humorous conversation with Amy, he gets up and begins walking towards us.  At that I scream at Amy, “GET IN YOUR CAR”.  So I am rolling up my window as Mike is yelling at me through my car window to leave him alone and just go be a girl and have babies.  Which is quite funny now that I think about it.  But not at the time, I thought he was going to hurt us or worse get himself killed by walking down the middle of the street.  Mike is in his sixties and drunk as a skunk and is walking down the middle of a street, where he is likely to get killed.  He thanked us for being human beings and then cussed us out for waking him up.  

When we left, the whole city of Birmingham’s finest firemen, ambulance drivers and policmen  were handling Mike, ALL BECAUSE WE THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD.  But I wondered as I drove home, what if I had not taken that road tonight (which is not my normal route home, but for some reason tonight it was), what if I had not looked to the left of me and saw his body (which honestly the fact that I was the only car out of 5 or 6 that did is ridiculous), what if Amy had not been in front of me (I would have stopped but would have been terrified to do so), what if we had not gotten Mike help?  Maybe he would have slept there till morning, or he might have gotten hit by a car or worse killed by someone passing by.  Lots of what ifs!

So now I feel safe, but honestly tonight has been scary.  I can’t wait for morning.

I can’t sleep

My body is so messed up from being in the Philippines.  I did everything I know to do to adjust back to real time but my body is refusing.  Right now it is Saturday at 7:00am.  I have been awake since 11:00am Friday morning.  I CANNOT SLEEP.  SERIOUSLY I just saw the sun rise.  AND I AM NOT TIRED.  Good grief.  This is frustrating.  I watched VH1 all night and caught up on my music videos.  By the way No Air By Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown (who by the way is a good looking man) is my new favorite from today.  I like that song – it may be because it played 12 times in the 6 hours I watched VH1 but I like it none-the-less.  Okay I am going to try to nap.  This is killing me! 

The Last Project

Today we visited the last project we will see before we leave tomorrow from Davao.  It was incredible.  I was once again escorted by a little girl into the room and we were honored with a presentation of song and dance by the Youth in that project.  A poignant moment happened when a 15 year old girl sang the song “Enough”.  ”All of you is more than enough for all of me, for every thirst and every need, you satisfy me with your love, and all I have in you is more than enough”…  Seriously….Seriously….this young lady lives in the depths of poverty and she sings it with conviction and truth in her heart.  She KNOWS this truth.  I will never sing that song the same again.  But this is the message of Compassion.  These children live in poverty, a hopeless place, a place that you and I would never make it in and if anything claim injustice on behalf of these people.  And while it is…..These folks know no different.  It is their home, it is their community, it is their life.  And…..at the same time they have hope.  Hope of salvation, hope of a future, hope of prosperity (not wealth, but of provision), hope that He who began a good work in them will be faithful to complete it.  That is the hope that my 15 year old friend sang about today.  The Lord really is Enough for her – he provides, he sustains, he gives her all that she needs, even when she has nothing.  Talk about a mirror in front of your face.  And at the same time the Lord is teaching me that I should not feel guilty of my place on this earth – I should feel the weight of the responsibility I have to share the message of his work in these places. (Acts 17:24-28).  There was a sign in the room when we arrived that said, “WELCOME U.S. STUDENT LIFE ADVOCATES”.  The word ADVOCATE stuck out to me and the Lord forcefully said to me, “Callie that is you”……”Callie that is your role here”…….”Callie……do you understand your position?”…….I am nervous, terrified even of speaking on behalf of these that I know, the ones that I have shared a meal with, the ones that I have held hands with, the ones I have played ball with and the ones that I have sat in their hut in the middle of the jungle with.  But that is my role.  I am an advocate…..I claim this burden to care for and love the widows and orphans, the poor and down cast.  That is mine.  But my friend Kinsley reminded  me, it is not mine to carry on my own (that is that whole idea of advocate at work)……It is OUR burden to carry, yours and mine.  My family must carry this burden,  my friends must carry this burden, my church, my co-workers, fellow believers, strangers.  That is our role.  I trekked through the jungle today (in a skirt mind you) and stepped into a hut where 7 children sleep on the bamboo floor (which is raised because of King Cobras), and I held a beautiful 7 month old, shook hands with a 13 year old daughter, watched the son teach Bowen how to shoot his sling shot, listened to the pride of their father as he told us of his job, hugged the neck of a mother who loves her children more than anything else in the world, tried sugar cane that the father insisted on cutting down for us to take…….and there I saw Love, I saw Hope, I saw Family, I saw Growth, I saw Community, I saw Belief, I saw Tenderness, I saw Protection, I saw Abundance, I saw Joy, I saw Compassion at work…….I saw all of this in the middle of depravity and poverty and it was Beautiful!  I have the privilege to tell these stories….may the Lord make me steadfast and diligent in communicating what He is accomplishing….may the Lord continue to grant me the favor to be apart of this opportunity….may the Lord make me a good steward of the things He has opened my mind, heart and soul to.I am proud to be a part of this…..Pray for us as we travel tomorrow back to Manilla to Tokyo and then back home to Birmingham.  It seems fitting that I will get to be with my whole family for Easter when I arrive home.  I find that purposeful as I debrief and process all that I have devoured, to be with the ones who love you and the ones who know you and the ones who have the responsibility to support you.  I am overwhelmed and excited.I will try to post more later. 

Yesterday….

Internet has been weird and unreliable so I am blogging today for yesterday and then I will do one for today…Right now we are in Davao, a very beautiful place.  Yesterday we slept in a little and all got ready to go to Church.  We went to the church where one of our LDP candidates, Eunice, goes.  There we celebrated the 61st anniversary of their church.  When we arrived we were greeted warmly and sat down in the front of the church.Not 5 minutes after being seated a gentlemen and his wife came and started introducing themselves to us.  Paul was from New Zealand and had married a Filipino woman and was now living in that community.  For some reason Paul liked me and literally he and I began to chat from the time the service started to the time the service ended.  Paul’s story goes something like this.  He grew up in New Zealand.  Got married to a Japanese woman who had a son.  He cared for the son as if he was his own.  Paul was a professor at a Cambridge affiliate university in New Zealand and his son attended there.  His son was very brilliant and on the day he was supposed to graduate with his PhD, he committed suicide.  His words were, “from that day forth my wife lost hope in everything and gave up on life, including me”.  They divorced, he left everything to her, retired and started traveling.  Which led him to the Philippines and where he met his current wife Grace.  Grace is a believer, Paul is not.  From our conversation, he told me, “I don’t like this church thing but my wife brings me all the time”.  Paul is good as gold and he for some reason really liked me and was really interested in my life.  I enjoyed my conversation with him.  The sermon and celebration at the church was incredible, once again refreshing to see the nations worship under the name of Jesus Christ.  It is always good to be in the room with your brothers and sisters from different nations to give you perspective on the Kingdom.  We visited with the people after church and as we were leaving I thought about what an odd encounter I had with Paul.  I pray that if the only reason I was supposed to be in the Philippines was to encourage a 68 year old New Zealander – then it will be worth it.  I pray Paul knows the salvation of the Lord because of what Compassion is doing around him even in his own church.Later yesterday afternoon after church Patty (our guide), took us to an island and we were able to relax and chill out.  I must tell you that I had a massage on the beach in the Philippines for $12.  It was the greatest experience ever!  I am still sore today.  Last night we then met with the other LDP students and had dinner and a cultural demonstration/presentation with them.  It was incredible.  The people here in Davao are talented singers, musicians and dancers.  Then at the end………I ate the most disgusting thing I have ever put in my mouth.  We have been talking the whole week about trying this thing called a Belute.A Belute is an egg they sell on the streets in the Philippines at night time for people to eat.  The egg is that of a duck.  It has been fertilized and incubated for 21 days (these things hatch when they are 28 days old).  Therefore it has a beak, feathers, etc……a DUCK!  They boil them and then you peel the egg and eat it.  I being cool and wanting to experience everything I can decided that I would do it at the beginning of the week – honestly when it came time my knees began to shake and my body convulsed with fear.BUT I DID IT!!!!!!  I freakin’ did it.  It was disgusting!  Truly disgusting.  There is a Youtube video of it called Eating Balut and it is me, Taylor, Kinsley, Eric, Brian, Bo, Roger and Ben ( i can’t remember the link but I will post it as soon as I can).  I claimed the honor of first girl to eat a Balut on a sponsor trip.  Honestly I am not sure it is worth it yet, but we will see.  Let’s just say I went to bed with my stomach making funny noises, but seem to be fine now.  

Living in Death

The community we visited today is called the Tomb Dwellers.  It is what it sounds like – there is a large cemetery in the middle of the city of Manila where people have made their homes among the graves.  Imagine if you can a cemetery in New Orleans where the tombs are above ground and are crowded together.  Now imagine people making their homes in the graves and on top of those tombs.  Literally people have made their beds on top of tombstones.  Some have even dug into the graves and under them to create living spaces for their families.  I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined that this existed, but it does. 

 

I stepped off of the bus and chills ran down my spine as I watched children play among the beds of the deceased.  Instead of backyards they run and hide in occupied graves.  Death is all around and yet these families have taken up residence among it.  This is not okay.  This is not where people should have to live.  But they do. 

 

Ashley and I visited the home of Wentworth.  He is an 8 year old who is in the Compassion Project.  He met us along the path and escorted us to his home.  There we were welcomed in and asked to sit down.  We spoke with him and his mother about what life was like there in the cemetery.  How her husband works and how she takes care of the children.  Wentworth and his brother Rico want to be doctors when they grow up.  Both said it is because they want to be able to take care of the sick and dying in their community.  I pray this is their reality one day. 

 

Ashley and I then were escorted to another home inside the graveyard wall.  We entered through a narrow opening in the wall and inside discovered a maze of tunnels that led to homes by the hundreds.  We stepped down into a crypt that had been made into a living room and visited another family whose child was in the Compassion program.  This mother was so grateful for what Compassion has meant for her child and family and the change that the Lord has made in her daughter’s life. 

 

As I got back on the bus and waited for the others, children who had followed us to the bus were playing at the window with me.  Tears ran down my face as it began to soak in the depravity in which these beautiful lives exist in.  I want to take them all home with me – but then I realize that is because I am shallow and forget sometimes to see the big picture in all of what the Lord is doing in and around His people.  I had forgotten that he has not forsaken His children – There is life there among the dead. 

 

To see the children in the Compassion Program and to know that salvation has come to so many of them and to grasp that they are still living in these situations is a weird tension.  They are living there and within their community are a light among darkness.  To change this community does not mean I rescue all of the children from the graves – that is not what it will take to break the cycle of poverty in this place.  No to break the cycle means that one child must be changed, affect their family – then mother and father, sisters and brothers are changed, affect their neighbors – then other families are changed, affect their neighbor – and so on and so on…..the generational cycle of poverty will eventually be broken and new life can begin to take place.  This is hard for me to wait for…..I want to demolish the cemetery, build houses and give everyone food, water and jobs to sustain themselves – but I am not sure this is the solution.  Poverty is not an absence of money, it is an absence of Hope.  There are children in this community who have Hope and they are sharing it with others and making a difference and spreading life among the dead – Literally. 

 

I am still processing all of this…..please pray that my heart will feel the weight of what I have experienced and I will be able to know how to be wise with my thoughts and feelings.  I want this to affect me in a way that urges me on towards the mission that Christ has commanded us to be apart of.   This might be a dangerous prayer. 

 

www.compassion.com

 

Today was a good day….

I woke up this morning at 6:00am – one hour before the alarm was supposed to go off.  My father would tell me to go ahead and get up because it will make you feel better, but I laid in the bed in the dark and thought about what my day was going to look like.  After getting ready, eating a power bar and getting on our bus – we journeyed to a project in the middle of downtown Manila.  There we saw an amazing church that has over 1000 members, is a wealthier church which has one of the largest Compassion projects in the whole Compassion organization.  This large, wealthy church is also in the middle of the worst slum and poorest areas of Manila.  There are over 728 children from age 3-21 that attend this project.  This doesn’t include the 45 – 50 babies age 0-3 that are apart of the Child Survival Project that take pregnant moms and help them as they give birth and raise their babies.  I was truly impressed with this project, the workers and staff are amazing individuals who have created an environment that is beyond my wildest imagination.  The best part of the day came when I was introduced to my sweet Compassion Child Jaypee.  He is an incredible little boy who was so shy he wouldn’t even let me sit close to him.  He is 4 years old and his mother is a courageous woman who is raising 6 children, one with disability, and is trying her best to give her children the best opportunity for them to survive.  Jaypee and I played a little bit with his new SpiderMan toy and his bubbles, which he kept wiping the bubble on his shirt to clean the wand.  As the day went on he relaxed a little and began to get comfortable with me.  He loved my camera and is a very good photographer!!  We ate lunch together at his very first restaurant – he ordered and ate everything we put in front of him – he is a champ!!!  I have such great hopes and dreams for Jaypee and feel privileged to be his sponsor.  I can’t wait to be apart of his journey as he grows.  His mother was so appreciative and I was blessed by her kindness.  I know that she is grateful for the opportunity Jaypee is getting in the Compassion Project.  I know now that hope is part of Jaypee’s life and I get to be apart of that – that is hard to wrap around my head and heart.  The other part of the day was spent visiting a home of one of the children in the Child Survival Program.  I jumped on a motorcycle with a cab car on the side of it.  We rode to a slum and visited one of the homes of a mother and child in the program.  These children are beautiful and to see such beauty living in such disgusting and awful situations is more than I can handle.  I know this is reality but I also realize that poverty is not about a lack of money, but poverty is truly a lack of Hope.  As I walked into an 8ft by 8ft room where a mother and son were sitting and a baby was hanging by a cloth hammock in the middle of the room, I saw hope in action. As I process all of this, I realize I am blessed to be apart of an organization that is really making a difference.  What I learned today:  Pity is disrespectful.  Giving Hope is what the Lord has asked us to be apart of.  Poverty is real….Christ is real…..therefore Hope is real.  I experienced that firsthand today.more tomorrow….. hopefully with pics!

An Easy Day…

Today was a good and relaxed day.  After a good night’s rest we got up and started to get ready for the day.  I blew the fuse in our room because my adapter and converter wasn’t the correct one for the hair dryer.  So I had to finish getting ready in the dark because I blew the whole room trying to do my hair (so needless to say it was a ponytail day).  We were greeted by 4 LDP candidates that are trying to get their Visa to come join us this summer on the road.  They are amazing people who have graduated through the Compassion Program and then went on to college through the Leadership Development Program.  We all got on a bus and visited the country office and met all the wonderful people who are running the show out here in the Philippines.  They are truly amazing individuals. 

 

We got to sightsee a little today from the bus and made one stop to an old prison, which was a fort and site of the war with Spain and where the U.S. made camp during the war (I believe WWII).  It is now a shrine and park in honor of a Philippine hero.  It was beautiful!

 

We took it easy today so that we could adjust to culture and jet lag.  From what I have experienced so far the Philippines is full of hospitable people.  It looks a lot like Mexico City with a little Asian influence.  A very eclectic place – Starbucks, McDonalds and huge shopping malls exist on the same street where a woman was washing her clothes in the dirty river that runs through the city!  Weird. 

I am about to crash because I am exhausted (jet lag is hitting me).  We will visit a Child Development Program tomorrow, which is where all the babies and mothers who are pregnant come.  I am really looking forward to holding little ones and getting to know these mothers who are so courageous and trying to provide the best environment for their babies.  I also get to meet my sponsor child tomorrow.  He doesn’t even know that he is being sponsored yet – so it should be an exciting day.  I will keep you posted

Day 1 or maybe it is Day 2…

Today…….wait I am not sure what today is.  I have been on an airplane for over 19 hours and I have flown into the sun, which means that as I was flying into Japan, yes Japan, the sun was setting but they were feeding us breakfast on the airplane, which by the way was fried rice and something that looked like beef tips(which I was not brave enough to eat) and a blueberry muffin – YUM!  This has been an adventure so far.  An airplane is an interesting social environment.  People, perfect strangers, from different countries, different states, different cities from around the world converge in an iron bird 23 million miles in the sky– we sit close to each other, there is no such thing as personal space on a Boeing 747-400 that only had 3 open seats in the whole airplane.  You eat the same crappy food, you go to the weirdest kind of bathroom, and you sleep face-to-face together just trying to get comfortable so that you can relieve your body of having to remind itself it is sitting in a really uncomfortable seat.  And somehow you are all okay with doing it that way.

 

Today, once again I am not really sure what today is –is it Monday, or Tuesday, – I think in my world it is Tuesday, but I will need to double check that.  Anyways today, I sat in my seat, 53-C, and a young lady probably about 18 years old was right behind me to squeeze into the window seat next to me.  I helped her with her bag because she is about 5 ft nothing and could not reach the overhead baggage – she thanked me and we started a conversation about how she was going over to the Philippines to visit family, she lives in Washington D.C. (which is one of my favorite cities so that was easy to talk about for awhile).  She told me she works at a Whole Foods Grocery store and while she was telling me this I saw that she was really proud of the fact that she there. It seemed odd but it made me wonder where that pride comes from.  Shortly after she sat down an older gentleman sat in the middle of us.  He was on his way to see family that he had not seen in 15 years.  15 years, that is a long time, he told me since the last time he had visited both his parents had died, so he was going to visit his brother and other family members.  I didn’t ask but I am pretty sure the girl and gentlemen are traveling together because he treats her like a daughter.  Taking care of her every need.  It has been interesting to observe.

 

There was a man who sat across the aisle from me – He looked Jewish in the truest sense of the word.  My favorite thing about him was that when he slept he turned his head to the side so that it looked like he was staring at me – but he was actually asleep.  Sitting 4 seats down from him was a young Japanese mother who was traveling with her 9-month old baby girl.  I couldn’t help but stare at this baby girl the whole time because she was so beautiful.  Her little porcelain skin was amazing and she was so delightful to watch as she played and cuddled with her mom.  I wonder what that story is. 

Throughout the flight an elderly Filipino woman wearing a red sweater and 2 rosaries around her neck would slowly make her way to the lavatory.  She probably did this every hour.  I can only imagine that age does not allow her to walk very well and she seems frightened.  Slowly but surely she makes her way to the restroom grasping every seat back in front of her as she goes to steady herself.  She smells like a magnolia flower. 

 

Today, I think it would have been yesterday afternoon, on Monday, but once again I am not sure.  I flew over the Hudson Bay, Canada (which is beautiful), over the Bering Sea (which for me is awesome because I love the Deadliest Catch show on the Discovery channel and that is where they fish), then over into Russia, and then landing in Nagoya, Japan this evening.  The airport was nice and from what I can tell most Japanese dress as if they are performing in a Hip Hop video on MTV.  The style is very urban – Hip Hop-grunge – and everyone dresses this way – even the old.  I like it – it reminds me of the anime’ cartoons you see on television.  I also experienced a Japanese toilet for women.  Let’s just say there is a hole in the ground in a stall – enough said.  I was too tired to figure it out so I waited for the “Western Syle” bathroom that was in the back of the women’s restroom.  It was quite funny.  So now I am sitting in my seat, it has been a bumpy ride since we left Japan.  I am nervous, excited and full of expectation, all though I am not sure what I am expecting.  This is a new experience, a whole other culture that I never dreamed of experiencing – so I am not sure what to do with it.  I pray that my attitude reflects that of Christ Jesus and I am able to encourage those around me.  I anticipate something great., something truly unique.  I hope I am ready to participate when the time comes. 

 

The Pilot just came over the intercom and said the plane is about to land.  So here’s to experiencing new things…..meeting new people and being apart of something greater than my wildest imagination.  Here’s to the beginning of the journey to the Philippines…….And maybe I will figure out what today is, tomorrow.