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Philippines II

Here is a second update from my friend Vonda. This picture is of her with her new friend John Mark.....please excuse how this all ran together when I uploaded it.

Good Morning Gang, Today was day number two of my short tour of feeding stations with Childcare Community Ministries Philippines It was a different experience than yesterday's feeding. The settlement that we went to, or as they are called here "barangays", is called Montelbon and it wasn't the same situation as with the garbage dump, but it was quite impoverished. The feeding took place at the church and the mothers all met on the ground level and the kids had their Bible lesson upstairs in a very hot, make-shift room. These kids were great. Very affectionate and they had all worn the very best clothes that they had because they knew visitors were coming (The Daileys and me). Their teacher stood in front of the little class and helped them recited their memory verses from "Ex-o-dose". They are learning the 10 commandments. As I stood in front of the room and took some video and pictures, their was one little boy who my gaze was drawn to. ( Now, let me give you a little aside here and a glimpse inside my head. Because of the places that I have traveled and all of the things that I have seen, I have subconsciously developed a guard so that I can function and not be melted to a puddle of something useless. It is not that I don't have compassion, it is because it be easy to become paralyzed with some of the sites I've seen.) Throughout my trips there have been the few kids that have taken me back in a certain way. In Guatemala it was a crippled boy named Jose who sat from his wheelchair and watched all the other kids play at school. In South Africa is was a baby named Mkoki who was the most delightfuly little peanut of a guy, who had been passed syphilis form his mother. And today I met John Mark. When I first saw John Mark, who is 3 years old, he had a baseball cap on that came way down because it was so big, and there were just two wide eyes peeking out and taking everything in. A few minutes later there his hat was off and exposed his ears, which are quite deformed. The more I watched him the more apparent it became that he wasn't quite up with the rest of the class. I went over and started to talk to him, but he was quite shy. The teacher and a couple of the others told me that he is a special child. Finally, I won his trust enough to allow me to hold him. He was so gentle with such a sweet spirit. As I was holding him and he was watching the kids he began to cry and he just let me hold him close and speak softly in his ear. We got a coloring page and started to work on it together. When I stood back from him, the CCMP nurse came and told me his story. John Mark is the youngest of three children, and when his mother was pregnant with him she tried to have an abortion. It was never clear as to what means she attempted to use, but thank God it didn't work. When he was born, she and her husband left John Mark, his brother and his sister with the grandmother who is now raising all three of them plus one other grandchild. Their family has an odd shaped ear, but it's believed that the attempted abortion caused his to form in such a severe way. The pastor told me that they also believe that he is autistic. When you are able to watch him and see how sensitive and sweet he is, the teacher had it exactly right - John Mark is a very special child.

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