Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Visitors Galore!
This year has brought many visitors to CSC here in Cebu. In the past several weeks we have had a team from Berean Baptist Church in Burnsville, MN, a group from Cambridge, MN that included one of our former residents and her mom, the family of some of our generous donors, a family from Norway that includes two of our former residents, a tour group from Australia, two couples from Minnesota who have adopted children from CSC, a group from Hong Kong, two contingents of social workers from agencies in the U.S., a Japanese pastor, an American who lives in Japan and is a family friend of the Reasoners, a visitor from Canada, a family from Singapore that 
has donated lots of books to our school, a family coming to pick up three boys for adoption and a supporting family from Guam. Tomorrow we will have a visitor from Hong Kong, and a family of three that includes a boy whom they adopted 25 years ago. Next week an adoptive mother and her sister arrive to pick up one of our girls, and a former resident and his brother from Minnesota will be coming for a visit. The following week we have a family coming to visit that includes one of our former residents, and a friend of the ministry from California. And undoubtedly there will be some surprise visitors that I'm not including in this list. We enjoy having visitors come. Truly, CSC is known and appreciated all around the world. Having guests come gives us a chance to get new people interested and excited about the ministry. We want people to become supporters of CSC! (If you have visited CSC, seen the great things that are happening there and the good people investing in the lives of the children, please find out how you can get involved in the financial support of this ministry! www.cscshelter.org
We love having former residents come back for a visit. Whether they just want to reconnect with the staff and workers that cared for them or if they want to search for birth family, we want to be an encouragement to them. It blesses us that they want to come back and see the place that extended love and care to them when they needed it so desperately.
There are lots of reasons that people come to visit CSC. Sometimes it gets a little bit taxing to fit all the activities that come with visitor into our already busy schedules. But its worth it!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Somewhere Out There
There was this homeless guy living outside our house. He slept against the wall to our yard, near where we park our car on the side street. His name is Arman, and he appeared there one night and stayed for several weeks. Sometimes he would be there during the day, but usually he just showed up in the late afternoon and would sleep there.
I talked to Arman one evening and learned that he had come to Cebu from another island. He was beat up by two men at the pier area and had to be taken to the hospital. After that, since he didn't have any money, he had to stay in the city, looking for food and sleeping wherever he could find a spot. Eventually he found a spot along our wall.
Arman was a nice guy. He would greet me when I pulled up in the car. Once I saw him cleaning the dust off my car with a rag. He never asked for anything. He just took advantage of a spot that was reasonably safe and had some protection from a tree. Arman was pretty much out of options and resigned to being homeless in a city far from his home.
Sometimes I would think about him out there when I was lying in my nice safe bedroom with my loving family near. We were both looking up from our beds, mine with a comfortable foam mattress, his cardboard, probably covered with insects. We shared the same sky above us, but not much else. Luckily it didn't rain much when he was living there, but when it would I'd always think about him and what he was doing to stay dry. I'm not sure if Arman prayed out there, but if he did we were almost certainly praying to the same God. What very different things we were probably praying for. From the comfort of my house it was easy for me to pray for the CSC kids, for relatives and people in need, for family members and for God's perfect plan for my life. I wonder what Arman was praying for out there on his flattened box? What did he think of when he thought about God. How did he imagine the plan for his life?
When you stop to think of it, a safe and comfortable place to live is the basis for much of the freedom we enjoy in our lives. We are free to work, to interact with friends, to take risks, to make decisions about where we'll eat and what we will do with the free time that we have, because we know that, at the end of the day, we will go home to a comfortable, safe place to sleep. Arman had to filter every decision he made through his homelessness. He could walk around but he had to stay fairly near to the place where he slept to make sure nobody else didn't take it. When he met people he had to be careful he didn't get too close, because he hadn't changed clothes in days and probably didn't smell all that well. When he saw families together he had to remember that he was isolated from family and might never see them again. If he had hopes he had to filter them through the reality that things probably weren't going to change for him. He didn't have an address or a phone number. I would greet him hello at the side of our wall, sometimes giving him something to eat or drink. Then I'd head inside and he'd crawl onto his cardboard bed. Maybe he would allow himself to think about what life was like in that big house inside the wall that he was curled up next to.
Arman is now back in Mindanao. We were able to help him get a boat ticket to go home. He seemed excited to travel, but he was certainly going home to poverty and need. But at least he would be near his siblings and his mom. And at least they would know that he is alive. I can't stop thinking about him and the very different situations that define our two lives. What did I ever do to deserve the comforts that I enjoy every day? Do I realize how fortunate I am and do I spend much time thinking about the homeless people around me and the filters that they live with every day? Do I imagine how difficult it is to be homeless? Do I think about the fact that the stars and heavens that I look up at are the same ones guys like Arman who are looking up at from their matts, wondering what God is like looking down on them.
I talked to Arman one evening and learned that he had come to Cebu from another island. He was beat up by two men at the pier area and had to be taken to the hospital. After that, since he didn't have any money, he had to stay in the city, looking for food and sleeping wherever he could find a spot. Eventually he found a spot along our wall.
Arman was a nice guy. He would greet me when I pulled up in the car. Once I saw him cleaning the dust off my car with a rag. He never asked for anything. He just took advantage of a spot that was reasonably safe and had some protection from a tree. Arman was pretty much out of options and resigned to being homeless in a city far from his home.
Sometimes I would think about him out there when I was lying in my nice safe bedroom with my loving family near. We were both looking up from our beds, mine with a comfortable foam mattress, his cardboard, probably covered with insects. We shared the same sky above us, but not much else. Luckily it didn't rain much when he was living there, but when it would I'd always think about him and what he was doing to stay dry. I'm not sure if Arman prayed out there, but if he did we were almost certainly praying to the same God. What very different things we were probably praying for. From the comfort of my house it was easy for me to pray for the CSC kids, for relatives and people in need, for family members and for God's perfect plan for my life. I wonder what Arman was praying for out there on his flattened box? What did he think of when he thought about God. How did he imagine the plan for his life?
When you stop to think of it, a safe and comfortable place to live is the basis for much of the freedom we enjoy in our lives. We are free to work, to interact with friends, to take risks, to make decisions about where we'll eat and what we will do with the free time that we have, because we know that, at the end of the day, we will go home to a comfortable, safe place to sleep. Arman had to filter every decision he made through his homelessness. He could walk around but he had to stay fairly near to the place where he slept to make sure nobody else didn't take it. When he met people he had to be careful he didn't get too close, because he hadn't changed clothes in days and probably didn't smell all that well. When he saw families together he had to remember that he was isolated from family and might never see them again. If he had hopes he had to filter them through the reality that things probably weren't going to change for him. He didn't have an address or a phone number. I would greet him hello at the side of our wall, sometimes giving him something to eat or drink. Then I'd head inside and he'd crawl onto his cardboard bed. Maybe he would allow himself to think about what life was like in that big house inside the wall that he was curled up next to.
Arman is now back in Mindanao. We were able to help him get a boat ticket to go home. He seemed excited to travel, but he was certainly going home to poverty and need. But at least he would be near his siblings and his mom. And at least they would know that he is alive. I can't stop thinking about him and the very different situations that define our two lives. What did I ever do to deserve the comforts that I enjoy every day? Do I realize how fortunate I am and do I spend much time thinking about the homeless people around me and the filters that they live with every day? Do I imagine how difficult it is to be homeless? Do I think about the fact that the stars and heavens that I look up at are the same ones guys like Arman who are looking up at from their matts, wondering what God is like looking down on them.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Off Load!
There are lots of indignities in the life of a big person in Asia. I've experienced many during my 31 years living here in Cebu: Smashing my head into overhead lights, wires, beams, decorations; having to bend over like a geriatric scoliosis victim when walking into houses or getting into vehicles; attracting a crowd when entering a store; having kids cry when they are surprised by my size, or having to answer the question "pila'y hite nimo?" (how tall are you?) many times a day. And lots more. If I wrote many more this would seem like a pity party, which it isn't. Being tall in the Philippines is something that I've had 31 years to get used to. If I'd have let all of these indignities bother me I wouldn't have lasted long. I've even learned to laugh at them, to celebrate the carnival of life. Like the other day. Well almost.
I was in Manila for the day and was getting ready for my
return flight to Cebu. I was flying on the "other airline," the competition for Philippine Airlines, taking advantage of a cheaper fare. "No frills" would be an understatement. We had to take a bus out to the plane parked on the tarmac. The bus stopped in front of this small prop jet and we piled out. I was certain that the bus driver had made a mistake, delivering us to the plane for Tuguergarao, Laoag or maybe even Cauayan, but not Cebu. But the stewardess standing at the rear of the plane insisted it was the plane for Cebu. I had never seen a prop jet like this one on the Manila-Cebu route. To say the least, I was a bit disconcerted. There was only one entrance to the aircraft, at the rear left of the plane. The steps were narrow and swayed when I walked up to the door of the plane. I noticed that there were only a couple inches of headroom above the flight attendant's head, so I knew I was in for trouble. Bowing my head was not enough; I had to bow and bend at the knees while I walked down the aisle to my seat in row 10. There were two seats on each side of the aisle. When I sat down I realized that my usual contortions would not be enough to get my legs behind the seat in front of me. My only option would be to put my legs almost entirely in the aisle. It was stifling hot in the plane, with no air moving at all. Even sitting down, there was only about two or three inches of head room. People were crowding in, filling up every overhead bin and stuffing items under the seats. It was getting hotter and stuffier by the minute. For a person who is claustrophobic anyway, it was not pretty for me. I realized that I was not going to be able to cram in there, wait for some air to get moving, and scrunch down enough so that I didn't feel like the world was squeezing in on me. I tried to make my way to the rear of the plane, but people were continuing to come in, or were standing in the aisle waiting for me to get out of their way. I was starting to get a bit panicky. What if they closed the door and I was trapped inside? Maybe the people could see by my face that I was in some distress, because they moved aside and let me pass. The flight attendant asked if I was okay. I said that I was not. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't get into my seat and I needed to deplane. There were still people on the narrow stairs trying to become the next sardines to enter the tin. I told the gal that I needed to get off pronto. Luckily she understood the Cebunao language and started calling out, "Make way for the off-load. Off-load coming down." I had forfeited my name, even my seat number which is usually used to identify people on a plane ("10B is requesting a large shoehorn to get into his seat!") I was "the off-load."
Off-loads make airlines very nervous, for good reason. Even though I told them I didn 't have any luggage, they needed to check that for themselves. They needed to change the flight manifest, removing my name. Why had I off-loaded, they wanted to know? Was I sick, angry, mentally unstable? Not only that, but I was stranded, way out on the tarmac, far from the terminal. Soon I had a group of six airline ground personnel surrounding me, asking questions.
Question: If someone in the first row would change with me could I make it on the flight?
Me: No. Even if I had the plane to myself I couldn't make it.
Question: Could I get you a glass of water.
Me: Even with something stronger I can't go back on that plane!
Question: Mr. Off-load, can I call you Load? Didn't you know it was going to be a smaller plane?
Me: No. I'm 6'7" tall, and I'm claustropobic. Nobody said the aircraft was a glorified model airplane being used as a sauna. Would I have agreed to take that kind of flight?
One of the guys told me that there were two later flights to Cebu, all on larger aircraft - the usual planes used for their Manila-Cebu flights. But both were full. So he had a plan to go and see if any passengers for the next flight were already there, so he could find one who was willing to take "my" flight and I could change with him/her. The people on "my" flight were going to have to wait while the oversized missionary off-load was accomodated by ground personnel. The guy got on his walkie talkie and said, "Off load, flight 577. Please send transportation." While waiting for the bus the group of guys gave me quite a bit of space, not entirely convinced that I was mentally sound and wouldn't run amuk on the tarmac. Five minutes later the bus arrived. The driver opened the door and asked, "You the down load?" (I'd gone from an off load to a download in a matter of minutes. I felt like a big, awkward tera byte standing there.) Yes, that would be me. He smirked. What kind of person/loser can't handle being on a small plane for an hour or so?, I know he was thinking. When we got to the terminal the guy who opened the door pointed me in the direction of the gate desk. "Good news, Off-load," they told me. "Someone has agreed to take your flight. You'll be on the next flight, loading in two hours."
As I headed for the waiting lounge I could feel their eyes burning into me. I'm more or less used to that, but this was something different. Never before had I felt so out of place, bulky - gawky, if you please. Here comes the off-load!
I was in Manila for the day and was getting ready for my
return flight to Cebu. I was flying on the "other airline," the competition for Philippine Airlines, taking advantage of a cheaper fare. "No frills" would be an understatement. We had to take a bus out to the plane parked on the tarmac. The bus stopped in front of this small prop jet and we piled out. I was certain that the bus driver had made a mistake, delivering us to the plane for Tuguergarao, Laoag or maybe even Cauayan, but not Cebu. But the stewardess standing at the rear of the plane insisted it was the plane for Cebu. I had never seen a prop jet like this one on the Manila-Cebu route. To say the least, I was a bit disconcerted. There was only one entrance to the aircraft, at the rear left of the plane. The steps were narrow and swayed when I walked up to the door of the plane. I noticed that there were only a couple inches of headroom above the flight attendant's head, so I knew I was in for trouble. Bowing my head was not enough; I had to bow and bend at the knees while I walked down the aisle to my seat in row 10. There were two seats on each side of the aisle. When I sat down I realized that my usual contortions would not be enough to get my legs behind the seat in front of me. My only option would be to put my legs almost entirely in the aisle. It was stifling hot in the plane, with no air moving at all. Even sitting down, there was only about two or three inches of head room. People were crowding in, filling up every overhead bin and stuffing items under the seats. It was getting hotter and stuffier by the minute. For a person who is claustrophobic anyway, it was not pretty for me. I realized that I was not going to be able to cram in there, wait for some air to get moving, and scrunch down enough so that I didn't feel like the world was squeezing in on me. I tried to make my way to the rear of the plane, but people were continuing to come in, or were standing in the aisle waiting for me to get out of their way. I was starting to get a bit panicky. What if they closed the door and I was trapped inside? Maybe the people could see by my face that I was in some distress, because they moved aside and let me pass. The flight attendant asked if I was okay. I said that I was not. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't get into my seat and I needed to deplane. There were still people on the narrow stairs trying to become the next sardines to enter the tin. I told the gal that I needed to get off pronto. Luckily she understood the Cebunao language and started calling out, "Make way for the off-load. Off-load coming down." I had forfeited my name, even my seat number which is usually used to identify people on a plane ("10B is requesting a large shoehorn to get into his seat!") I was "the off-load."Off-loads make airlines very nervous, for good reason. Even though I told them I didn 't have any luggage, they needed to check that for themselves. They needed to change the flight manifest, removing my name. Why had I off-loaded, they wanted to know? Was I sick, angry, mentally unstable? Not only that, but I was stranded, way out on the tarmac, far from the terminal. Soon I had a group of six airline ground personnel surrounding me, asking questions.
Question: If someone in the first row would change with me could I make it on the flight?
Me: No. Even if I had the plane to myself I couldn't make it.
Question: Could I get you a glass of water.
Me: Even with something stronger I can't go back on that plane!
Question: Mr. Off-load, can I call you Load? Didn't you know it was going to be a smaller plane?
Me: No. I'm 6'7" tall, and I'm claustropobic. Nobody said the aircraft was a glorified model airplane being used as a sauna. Would I have agreed to take that kind of flight?
One of the guys told me that there were two later flights to Cebu, all on larger aircraft - the usual planes used for their Manila-Cebu flights. But both were full. So he had a plan to go and see if any passengers for the next flight were already there, so he could find one who was willing to take "my" flight and I could change with him/her. The people on "my" flight were going to have to wait while the oversized missionary off-load was accomodated by ground personnel. The guy got on his walkie talkie and said, "Off load, flight 577. Please send transportation." While waiting for the bus the group of guys gave me quite a bit of space, not entirely convinced that I was mentally sound and wouldn't run amuk on the tarmac. Five minutes later the bus arrived. The driver opened the door and asked, "You the down load?" (I'd gone from an off load to a download in a matter of minutes. I felt like a big, awkward tera byte standing there.) Yes, that would be me. He smirked. What kind of person/loser can't handle being on a small plane for an hour or so?, I know he was thinking. When we got to the terminal the guy who opened the door pointed me in the direction of the gate desk. "Good news, Off-load," they told me. "Someone has agreed to take your flight. You'll be on the next flight, loading in two hours."
As I headed for the waiting lounge I could feel their eyes burning into me. I'm more or less used to that, but this was something different. Never before had I felt so out of place, bulky - gawky, if you please. Here comes the off-load!
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