Children of Baseco…
Here are a few of our “Extra Special” little friends. We are not supposed to have favorites, but we all do. All over the world woman and children bear the largest part of the burden for being poor. Children are so cute, so innocent and also so unable to change their own circumstances…check out some of these little faces…super cute…
- Photo – My absolute favorite is a little girl named Daniela. She was not even born when we began working in Baseco. She was the first girl in a family of 3 boys. She sees me and that’s it, she toddles up, climbs up and she has me. I gave her the nickname “Girlfriend”, if I call out to her using her nickname, she responds. She is super cute and she is mine. We will send her to school and change her life, how could you not…look at her.
- Bogoy, real name Lewis. Such a quite natured little boy, only one older sister. His mum works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. His father rides one of our Pedi Cabs. Just a beuatiful little man, loves Chris.
- Marlin Ortega. He broke the top bone in his left leg…ouch. He will spend a few months in plaster, unable to move. But at least his mum can carry him around using the piece of wood between the two casts, and I am not joking at all.
- These are two of Girlfriends brothers, Jimboy and Barnie. Barnie would be one of my favorite little boys and a great mate.
- A plate of rice, nourishing…not! But for some this is often all they eat.
- Might not be the latest posteurpedic mattress in a quite air conditioned room full of toys and teddies, but it seems to be working for this guy as he sleeps in the middle of a busy market area.
- If you want to enter the Kingdom of heaven you must become like a little child…amen.
- Work…un-earthing metals or hard plastics in a fresh truck load of land fill.
- The last photos is just a sad photo. Small, malnourished child, sitting alone in a slum home…no one caring, no one feeding, no one helping…until we come along.
The conditions that children live in around the world is often hard to comphrehend, perhaps impossible, until you see it yourself. Every photo that gets posted on this blog, I took myself. We didn’t search for them on the net and post them for an emotional response, or in an effort to raise finaces…we post them so that people “KNOW”, and hopefully in the knowing there might rise up a few individuals who will get a burden for the poor and who then begin to make a differance in the life of some one other than themselves.
Bless you – Mark
Medical Mission – Temporary Relief for the Poor…
We just had a Medical Mission in our church in Baseco. We had 2 doctors and 1 dentist who worked really hard for most of the day. The doctors saw 330 patients and the dentist pulled out more than 100 teeth from 45 patients…they worked hard, volunteering their time to help the poor. Every patient got medicines and vitamins for their various ailments.
We had a team of our leaders praying for people and sharing Jesus with everyone. It was a big day for all involved. The guy who provided the clinic is a German Missionary named John. He had a team of 14 workers doing various things all day. Here are a few pics…
Medical Missions are a catch 22 situation…you medicate people who will need medicating again. Many of the people who attended the medical mission have minor sickness’s that are not life threatening…but it does allow us another level of connection into the community, allowing us to find some of the more serious disease issues, as well as opening up more opportunities for prayer and potential miracles.
We found another baby who will need a hairlip operation and our second rare case of Kwashior Kor Malnourishment. A very deadly form of malnourishment, where the child looks fat, but is severley malnourished. The fat look is due to the childs internal fluid leaching into the skin due to the child’s internal organs de-hydrating. Predominantly caused by a massive vitamin A deficiency, along with basic lack of food and vitamins.
The Pedi Cab Program…it works…
Pedi Cabs, short distance local transport. Basically a bike with a side car on it, for passengers or goods transport. A poor persons job.
There would nearly be no people working in this industry who own their own Pedi Cab, the rent it for varying amounts of money, from some one who might own 100 or more. The rental price is relatively expensive and is paid daily to the owner. To ride in one of these is a cheap, but negotiable price bwtween 10 – 50 pesos per ride. The rental can be anywhere between 50 – 120 pesos per 12 hour period. We have known people who work in this industry to ride their Pedi Can all day and come home with enough money to buy a couple of kilos of rice – not enough to live on.
So we developed a program whereby we produced 40 Pedi Cabs, had them made brand new. We selected drivers from people who were already working in this industry and we gave them a Pedi Cab. They still have to pay us a rental, but our rental is onle 10 pesos per day (whole day, 24 hour period). This 10 pesos per day is then used to send one of that drivers children to school for the year. So the driver is giving us 10 pesos and we organise and facilitate for their child to go to school, it’s nearly like a forced savings plan – we get no profit from the rental, the drivers child recieves his rental via education.
The benefits to the program are many fold – before the driver only had his Pedi Cab for 12 hours of the day, but now he has it in his possession everyday, all day…so dad can ride it all night or day and an older son can ride it whenever it is not in use, so they can double their income if they are prepared to work . This allows the husband more family time, he can even take the odd day off so that he can attend something at school with his child or help the mother at home.
This program has been running for nearly a year and it works. It is changing peoples income and their attitude to life…hope has come, there is now a reason to work a bit harder and try a little more.
To produce a Pedi Cab, register it and license the driver costs AUD $350 per unit, once the driver has the unit, the program is self funded. Another great way no only to change life, but to lift financial pressure off of a whole family.
Some great miracles…what can Jesus do…
This is Agelo Dela Cruz, we found him being pushed along the road in a small wooden cart, he was dying. Severely malnourished, ant bites all over him and a huge growth on the back on his head. The photo where the growth is gone was taken 14 hours later, the photo of Angelo fat and healthy, was taken two months later. Nothing is impossible…
Stopping Malnourishment – child by child
Maybe a year ago we found a whole family of malnourished children. We have worked with malnourishment issues alot, but even for us, these children were in bad shape…but praise God we were able to save them.
But unfortunately two of these children went back into malnourishment and as a result one of them died, a little boy, Robert. His sister has survived, her name is Miracle. She spent two weeks in a malnourishment ward and has been released into our care. She will need at least a month of consistant food and vitamins before she will go home to her family. This is a very unfortunate case, where both mum and dad would be good cases for the worst parents in the world. The glaring neglect, lack of love and care and no seeming desire to change.
If the father has any work, he will simply get drunk, the mother seems to make more effort for the children. But in our world a sick or weak child is soon neglected. If they can’t feed itself while the other brothers and sisters are eating, they will just miss out. Then as the child becomes weaker and weaker they stay home more and more, lack of excercise, lack of interaction with other children and adults, parents that are rarely home to care for the child, lack of water…and before to long the child will die.
Children and women all over the world bear the worst of the effects of poverty…but children are the ones that die so easily. Children should never be hungry.
Miracle came home on friday, saturday we took her into our care. She is now living with Pastor Marivic for the next one or two months. She will get three meals a day, daily vitamins and additional nutritous snacks at least twice a day and hopefully her little body will recover enough to go home again.
I will put a new improved, fat looking Miracle in the next blog, so you can see what a couple of weeks of food will do for a malnourished child – YOU WILL BE AMAZED.
This morning at 6am her older sister came to my house looking for her. Flora Mae just loves miracle. I think in places were parents are so often not there, siblings build incredibly strong relationships. So I walked her down to Marivics house, we explained why Miracle was there and let her know that she can visit every day if she wants to. They were so happy to see each other. Kids need so much love, love makes such a diferance in their lives.
In the west we have this ideal that the Asian family is so together, so strong…but we have learned that that is just not true. In the poor communities there are very few families where mums and dads have not been married many times before, had children in those relationships and then moved onto the next relationship. How often does some one tell us they have children here, here, and here. An incredible aount of families will tell you how many living children they have, as so many of them have had children die.
Poverty touches everything – poor people can afford contraceptives, so they simply produce heaps of children, children that they can’t afford to feed or educate, once a man has 5-6 children with this wife, he will often leave as it is too hard to support them. Mum is then left in the situation where she has all these children, so she can’t work and look after them. If any children are going to school, she will take them out of school so they can either scavenge through rubbish or perhaps stay at home with the other children, so that she can do some form of work. So the children grow up uneducated and can’t get jobs themselves…and the cycle just keeps repeating.
Without Jesus it would be a hopless situation…but when Jesus comes into a persons life, the Redeem and Lift begins to happen. As people committ to Him, He begins to work miracles, He begins to provide supernaturally – regardless of the economic situation. An example, Pastor Marivic – a poor pastor living in a slum…NO WAY. Her economics are the same as everyone around her, but her heart is full of Jesus and so she can take in a child, she will feed and clothe Miracle, she can feed other children in her community, she can give and give and give, and her resources never run dry, because Jesus bless’s her so that she can BE A BLESSING TO THOSE AROUND. She has been redeemed and things have begun to lift, she is no longer needy, she is a giver. She has nothing more than anyone else, except JESUS.
If you have nothing else to give, give JESUS to some one – that will make all of the differance.
We just recentally had a visit from two Aussie, Andrew and Michael from Hope City Church in Melbourne. Great guys, with real hearts for the poor. God bless you guys and your families.
