On a hot Monday morning, we met up with Mark and Yen Cabag, both natives Filipinos who pastor in Iloilo. I liked the couple immediately. They both had warm smiles, joy exuding out of them mixed with unconditional love and acceptance. They were taking us to the Dorcas House, an orphanage founded about 40 years ago by a Baptist missionary. The Cabages' youngest son, Samuel, whose adoption is being finalized, had been abandoned an an infant before finding his way to Dorcas House where Mark and Yen first met him. He had somehow survived the first two weeks of his life on only the water that rice had been boiled in before receiving love and care at the Dorcas House.
Pastor Mark had not always been interested in fostering or adopting children. The couple already had one son born to them. Then God gave Mark a vivid dream where a boy was floating down a river, in danger of drowning. Mark was able to reach out and rescue him, which left a profound impact on him. The couple decided to begin pursuing adoption of orphans.
Mark and Yen's old van had no air con (as the Filipinos call a/c), but there was a pretty good breeze through the lowered windows as we traveled far out into the countryside. First, though, we stopped at a roadside restaurant that was owned by someone in their congregation. They had called ahead and ordered us authentic Philippine cuisine, including some soup (it was hard to eat soup in such heat!), chicken feet (Zak, of course, tried it), and some halo-halo for dessert, a mixture of shaved ice, evaporated milk and various boiled sweet beans, fruit and cheese. It was a little too many diverse tastes and textures in one place for Jessika and me to enjoy. Zak loved it, although he had to fight off the flies that were contending for our food in our outdoor seating.
We arrived at the orphanage shortly afterward. The pastors had brought snacks for the children, which would help them warm up to the many white people they would be seeing that day. There were six of us Americans in all.
The older children were in school, leaving only the toddlers and babies. Unlike most children I am accustomed to, these children were extremely shy and non-inquisitive. Their passivity told me that they had either been abused or neglected before coming to the orphanage, which Yen confirmed.
I did not want to frighten any of the children, so I didn’t approach them but hoped they would eventually come toward me. For a long time that didn’t look like it would happen, although I got to hold an infant for a bit, until Jessika commandeered him. Finally, after about 90 minutes, one of the 18-month-old twin girls that I had been smiling at, finally got close enough for me to gently scoop her up and hold her. She did not resist. It was time to eat the spaghetti, hotdogs and ice cream that Mark and Yen had brought, so I sat her on my lap at the table to feed her. She didn’t reach out and grab everything within her grasp as you would expect a normal toddler to. She had serious brown eyes, far too big for her face that looked at me solemnly as she slowly slurped up the spaghetti or the ice cream I offered her. I wondered what kind of trauma she and her sister had experienced in their short lives, and I was glad they were getting love and nurture now. I prayed for the right family to come into their lives.
In direct contrast to these children, the kids we saw both at the Sonshine Center and the Hope Center at Calajunan were energetic and warmed up to us immediately. It was refreshing to see children enjoying playtime without phones, iPads or other electronic devices in front of their faces. When we were at the Sonshine Center waiting for the Saturday children’s service to start, they played outside on the swings, in made-up games that needed no equipment, basketball or plain old tag. They were happy children, for the most part, and appreciative as well.
During the service, there was lots of high energy singing and dancing, with everybody sweating buckets. At the teaching time, the 100-plus children sat on the floor with hands in their laps, listening or responding to questions. There were no multi-media presentations, just a simple object lesson from an animated group of teen-age and adult leaders. Children who weren’t paying attention were reminded to do so by the other teens who were on the perimeter “working the crowd.” Any child who didn’t heed their first or second warning to pay attention was taken out of the room for a conversation. The children obviously knew it was a privilege for them to come to the Sonshine Center because they could be asked to not return if they did not cooperate.
Each child left with a bag of rice and a bag of chicken gumbo-type of concoction. They bit a tiny hole in the bottom of the bag to suck the soup. When I tried it, I accidentally bit a hole in two corners and so made a huge mess with chicken soup dripping everywhere. I tried to clean up my mess, but Filipinos don’t believe in paper towels, and the napkins they use for eating are miniscule! It was not a pretty sight for me to wipe up the floor with the little pieces of paper.
The ever-present Jeepneys took us to the beach where 27 young people were pledging their decision to follow Christ through water baptism.
We enjoyed a home-cooked chicken gumbo meal and then listened to Pastor Brenda, the youth leader, talk to the young people about what baptism means. Both Zak and Jessika got to share their testimonies about their own journeys of coming to Christ, with Zak getting to relate his story of having been baptized only a few months earlier in the States.
Then it was time to go out to the water where the baptismal candidates were immersed one by one by those who had been discipling them. These were teens not much older or the same age as those being baptized. Everyone shouted and clapped as the follower was immersed and came out of the water, smiling happily and praising God. Their joy and excitement was contagious, and Natalie said it must be what heaven is like.
To see photos of the event, go to http://natalieamattes.blogspot.com/.
