Day 9: Jazzing up the girl's home

We rose and shone at 7am, some at 7:20, ready for a beautiful breakfast of scrambled eggs, toast and bananas. Today consisted of intense construction, mixing a cement, building a septic tank and walls. Although we were exhausted from yesterday;s de-struction; today was the last full day of construction, so we gave it all we've got. During some of the digging, we discovered not only a nest of termites, but also a number of small (30 cm long) snake which Emily and Mr Ryall had fun catching.
The Filipino workers showed us tricks to building, it is so inspiring to see how hard working these people are. It is all MAN power, they have few machines like we do in Australia. Every bit of cement had to be mixed by hand and trust us when we say that they are extremely fast and effective.
As the construction jobs only required a limited amount of people, some of the team went into the children's home to play with the kids, blowing bubbles, receiving cuddles and for the first time heading up to the nursery to see the babies. One of the babies was born prematurely and thus is very small. Many oft he girls fell in love with the beautiful little treasures and were tempted to smuggle the one. We fell blessed to be a part of this, serving God's people, but what we realised was these people have blessed us so much more than we have blessed them. Living in such an affluent country , faith often comes as an 'option' to us, where as here, faith is what drives every day. Faith is necessary. Faith is real, faith can be felt.
The more we have the more we want , and we have so much stuff that we don't need, cluttering our lives, taking up space where Jesus could be instead. People here know that God is the center of all. A typhoon doesn't shatter faith. A lady lost 17 of her family members in Typhoon Haiyan and she said to one of the team at a recent feeding, "God is so faithful, you should never lose hope, it is all in his plan." Thy know that whether it may be time of abundant blessing or a time where things/people get taken away, the only stable thing is God's grace and God's grace is sufficient (which we witnessed in Miss Smoker's testimony today at the JAZ Home). After another fantastic meal for lunch, a number of the team took some time for a short siesta before returning to the job site. The lack of sleep, busy schedule and physical work is leaving many of us tired.

After returning to the Ministry center and eating dinner, we heard some stories from a group of people who had just returned from Tacloban. There were stories of devastation, survival, tragic death and reunions. It was great to hear that the city is on its way to rebuilding with a number for businesses reopening, food and water supplies returning. However they reminded us that there is a long way to go. It could take years for the rebuild to occur as many of the families do not have the funds to rebuild homes which were lost.

For devotions, we returned to the JAZ home, where Ben lead us in some songs and Miss Smoker shared some of her journey in life and faith. We then gave each of the girls a bag filled with lip gloss, nail polish, hair accessories, journals, pens, ... The girls were very excited to receive the gifts and look through what they were given. As it was our last night at the Jaz home, a number of the girls wanted to be able to contact some of the people in the team via e-mail or facebook and to get pitures. As you can imagine the boys were very popular, including Ben, Chris and Jesse. From there we went to Tay Tay a local shopping center and enjoyed Starbucks. As few cars were available tonight, we had to borrow a car with less seating so it was a squishy fit.

Today we leave you knowing that our lives have been touched by the resilience, love and faith of the Filipino people, Knowing that what we have done here might be a drop in a bucket, but God has made it "our" droop. And for now we can only pray and hope that the drops we made turns into an ocean. An ocean that impacts the lives of many.

Dear Mum, Dad and Angisha. Hope you're missing me and you're reading this! Having a great time, want to see you but want to stay longer. Hoping to see you soon. All the love. God Bless - Yande

Ello Dad, Tan, Sab and Zac. Having a great time. Missing everyone. Not long now! Haha Kiss Holly for me :) Lots of Love Abby xox