Laughter, Learning, and Life-Giving Water: Best Day Ever!

Boy I think it’s going to be hard to top how amazing today was! Let me start at the beginning ;)

This morning I got to go into one of the barangays (kind of like villages or neighborhoods, they have their own governmental system with an official but are closer to what we would call a neighborhood) and give out water filters to a couple of schools! It was interesting seeing how different going even just ten minutes into the mountain can be. The houses and roads get rural fast, and no purified water is delivered up there.

These filters are incredible! They can last up to ten years and are modeled after the same tools used for dialysis machines! They’re incredibly easy to use and maintain and can clean any water except seawater. We taught the teachers at the school how to use it and maintain it, and then had them teach us.

John wrapped up by saying that we are giving these water filters away for free and we only ask one thing in return: that they give the water away freely, as they had been given freely.

I think it paints a beautiful picture of so many aspects of Jesus! But especially unconditional love. We are given unconditional love so freely by the Father which enables us to freely give to others. Ugh! I could go on and on about how beautiful a gospel tool these water filters are and how needed they are in these communities, but there were other amazing things that happened today that I want to talk about!!

We got back right around lunch time and since the weather was so bad yesterday, the schools had closed for flooding today which meant many of the translator’s kids were at clinic. So we had lunch with Arya, who’s seven years old and LOVES to talk about EVERYTHING! She told us that eating too much mango ice cream will give us diabetes so we need to be careful and told us all about her brothers and sisters and even went on a tangent about having to catch so many foxes in Minecraft because they kept getting killed!

She was a delight :) and the kids didn’t stop there! Again, because school was out today, lots of people had to bring their kids with them to clinic, even if they weren’t sick. Which meant a lot of bored and unruly kids. Which is my specialty if I do say so myself ;)

My bubbles and stickers and grease crayons came in super handy! And so I painted faces and handed out stickers and blew bubbles for close to three hours! So much fun! And some of the kids are learning English in school and talked about everything to me too! From spiders to Squid Games and math homework and skeletons, we covered it all!

Later in the afternoon, we sat down to work on some more public health training, but the two high school students had finals moved from the morning to the afternoon so they couldn’t come. Pastor Jimmy asked if he should find two people to replace them and since we were doing wound and burn care, I told him to find whoever wanted to come to join.

About five minutes later, ELEVEN people showed up!! Pressure was on! But it was incredible. I really think God planned to have those people there when He did. They asked tons of questions and worked through many scenarios. We made butterfly bandages together, and even got to splinting and were making mummies out of the whole bunch! There were lots of jokes and laughter and learning together with our now very large class (which kept growing, by the way, as more people got curious what was going on) at one point there was what I can only assume was a fantastic joke in Cebuano, and I smiled and they looked at me once they had settled down and I just had to laugh and said “I have no idea what you said” which caused another uproar, but we eventually got back to the point.

At 4:10 (clinic officially closed at 4) we got through the last page of the whole training!! I couldn’t be prouder! Which means that tomorrow they will get to work in triage and then receive their certificates of completion and backpacks! I am so looking forward to them feeling equipped to care for their flock spiritually and now physically. God is our ultimate Healer, and He has now provided these pastors and students to be His hands in this way.

After clinic, we took a tuk-tuk to dinner and had some great milk tea and pizza (interesting combo, I know. But not quite as interesting as one of the menu items: cheese and cookie pizza which was a mozzarella cheese pizza with crushed up Oreos!! No one was quite adventurous enough to try that this time around.)

Back at the hotel now, I really can’t pick a favorite moment from today. Even though I am utterly exhausted and I think I have bruises on my knees from crawling around on the concrete with the kids, it makes me so excited to see what God is going to do in the morning.