Though you see McDonald’s delivery motorcycles every few minutes on their way to deliver food to someone at their front door steps, you also see kids begging in the nearby streets. Everyday my team and I go into the streets to feed children, and I get the chance to love on kids that are just as hungry for love as they are for the rice soup they are in line for. To and from the line for rice the kids find your arms – even for just for a moment. More times than not a smile can be found, and when it is found you are met with the sight of rotting teeth in little mouths. Daily my head makes contact with kids whose heads are covered with lice. I find myself saying prayers of protection over my own head and also theirs. I pray for them to find relief from the itching that comes from lice. At night, once I lay down to sleep with a full stomach, I know that the dozen or so kids that didn’t make it to the van for rice in time are probably going to bed hungry.
On our free days I find myself at the mall where young Filipino girls are following older white men out of the building, no one has to tell you what’s going on; You already know.
This is the world I live in. As people back home are getting ready for Christmas (my personal favorite holiday), I find myself handing out rice, kissing scrapes, wiping running noses, throwing yet another toy in the pool for the fiftieth time (but the “last time” according to Peter that is). I have multiple kids each day touching/tracing the tattoo on my back with their little fingers trying to decide if it is real or not, whispering truth over kids as I hold them, speaking prayers of protection over their little lives. This is what life looks like for me.
My life now compare to the life I had just a few months ago is a paradox in itself. A few days ago on the way to a feeding I looked out the van window and saw yet more delivery motorcycles, then seconds later I saw street kids begging for food and or money. God began opening my eyes to the paradox of this city, this country that for the next three months I call home. My heart began to ache, to break for what I was seeing. It was then I heard Him say, “This is your love story with me”.
When I think of a love story the last thing I think about is smelly clothes, dirty feet, and living in a four-bedroom apartment with twenty-one other girls. Yet that is what my love story with the Lord looks like.
When God writes your love story know that He will also wreck your life. I feel wrecked; I’ve felt wrecked all week. Yet, it is when I feel the most wrecked that I realized I wouldn’t choose any other love story than the one the Lord has written for me.
So beautiful. Over the duration of my 9 month trip, the Philippines stole my heart immediately. It’s a heart wrenching country that will break you for so much corruption, sin, and brokenness. But there is also so much beauty in simplicity, love, and openness to the Gospel. I’m praying that you let yourself continue to break for the juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty. Let yourself feel the pain, because thats where God comes in to let your heart break like his does, everyday.
What an amazing testimony for all of us back home. As I read your story it helped me to better understand what you are going thru. Like maybe I could share in your pain thru this. I am pray for alllll the little children