Complete Joy

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”

                                                                                                                                   Matthew 25: 35-40

This past weekend, we got to participate in our first “Feeding Program”! Last year, LST began to implement service projects into every college team’s trip that summer. When most people my age think of a mission trip, they think of going and building houses or working with orphans or doing some other kind of manual labor; what they don’t think of right off the bat is sitting across the table from 10 different people a day and reading the Word of God with them for 45 minutes each while building a lasting relationship with the person. I think it is an amazing idea for LST to incorporate an element of service into their trips; I feel like this gives us the opportunity to provide a more holistic ministry for the site we visit.

LST leaves it up to the missionary to decide what type of service would be most beneficial in their city; we can help them with a building or repair project, we can play with children in the streets, we can clean the church building, or we can feed the hungry. We use these service projects in the place of one of our parties that we normally host each week. At both events we invite the local church members and our readers; so it gives them an opportunity to meet each other in an easy-going setting. The intent of both our parties and these service projects are to connect our readers with the local church members so when we leave at the end of our trip, there are a group of Christians ready to follow up with our readers and continue to build lasting relationships. Depending on the receptiveness of the reader, the local church will continue to follow up by simply providing more opportunities to practice their English or by going into deeper Bible study with the individual.

At our initial meeting with Wayne and Margie, we set the dates for the two Feeding Programs we would have while we were here—a 3 week LST team has one service project and a 6 week team has two—and we have been looking forward to our first one ever since! So, early Saturday morning, Wayne and Margie went shopping and then Margie began cooking at her house with the help of a few of the church members. Brittiny, Jen, and I joined them shortly after and they taught us how to make lumpia, which is essentially a small pork egg roll.

At 1pm, we took the rice soup, hardboiled eggs, lumpia, and juice that we had prepared to one of the many slums in Talisay City. We gathered with the children who live there and sang songs with them, prayed, and then served them the food we had prepared. Gerald, the church’s intern for the months of May and June, helped us lead songs that the children knew in Visayan as well as in English. Gerald has been with us at the church during our reading sessions every day, so we have gotten to know him well. Brittiny, Jen, and I were all extremely impressed with how well Gerald stepped up and interacted with the children during our time of song and prayer. I think it is safe to say that the Feeding Program would not have been as much of a success if he had not been there and been willing to lead.  So, thank you Gerald!

After about an hour of singing, we served the children their snack and spent time walking around and talking with the children. Though these children have next to nothing to call their own in this world, you could visibly see the complete joy that it brought them to have the chance to eat a small meal and just sing and dance and play with us.  I am so blessed to be able to have the opportunity to interact with these children even for the small amount of time. God gets all the glory for blessing us with the ability to come to the Philippines and be able to serve Him through serving the children this past weekend and this coming weekend. We could do nothing without Him and nothing that we attempted to do would mean anything without his grace.

How you can pray for us: Pray for the children at the Herbas Compound (where we served food). Pray that God blesses their lives with rich, meaningful relationships and that the community continues to minister to them. Pray that they will have someone in their lives that will show them God's love for His children. Pray for their parents; pray that they will be able to find the work that they need in order to provide for their children's needs. Pray that the people who live there will continue to find complete joy in the small things and will always remember that their Creator is watching over them. Pray for our feeding program next week...that we are able to spread more joy and that God will continue to receive all the credit for the good work being done. To God be the glory!