Clowning around in Malaybalay

A little over a week ago one of our friends, Jeff, called Daniel and asked him if we would want to travel with him, another friend, Ted and a short term team to another island and see the children's home they have started there. We had gone with him and Ted a couple years ago when he was first thinking about starting a home in Mindanao, but haven't been back to see what has come of his efforts. So, when he offered I think both of us were pretty excited to get the chance to see it and to get out of the big city for a couple days. We quickly made arrangements for JoAnn to stay with some friends in Manila and packed our bags so we could leave early Wednesday morning. At 2 AM our alarms went off and we headed to the airport to fly to Cagayan de Oro and then drive to Malaybalay. Normally I dread driving right after I fly, but once you get outside of Manila, the Philippines is such a beautiful country that I was actually looking forward to the drive. There were mountains in the background and rivers that we drove over and green vegetation everywhere. Also one of the big things that I notice anytime I am outside of Manila is that even though the poor are still very poor, it is a different kind of poor. They usually don't live right on top of each other and are able to keep their places much cleaner. It really provides a little break from the sometimes overwhelming city of Manila. Here is a picture of Daniel and I on a bridge on the way to Malaybalay.


Once we got to Malaybalay, the group we were with did their first performance, which by the way was a group of clowns from Georgia. Here are a couple pictures to prove they were actually clowns.

Their second performance was at the children's home/christian camp. The children's home is on a piece of land that was donated to them and on the property closest to them they are helping build a christian camp for Filipinos in the area to use. It really is a neat place. This is a picture of the construction of the camp. In the future they are hoping to have a covered cafeteria, a building to house the campers, a covered basketball court and a soccer field. They have already started on the building to house the campers and the cafeteria area. The reason there is no grass is because they have leveled the ground to prepare for the soccer field and basketball court.

That picture is right off the pourch of the Children's home which is what this building is.


In the future this will have the ability to house 48 kids and they have plans to build a second building that would be able to house another 48 kids. There is really a lot going on and I must admit that I was really impressed with it. Daniel has worked with Jeff ever since we got to the Philippines, helping with the finances of the children's home that he started in Manila. So it was really neat to see what he has started in another area of the country.

That was all on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday, we were able to spend some time meeting the local Filipinos that Jeff has helping him since he still lives in Manila. They are really a great group and I have a huge respect for them. We were also able to spend some time with the Moody's. They are a missionary family that we met in Manila. They lived here for six months before going back to the US for a few months and then when they came back they went straight down to Malaybalay to help coordinate all that Jeff has going on down there. All in all it was a great trip and it was great to get back to JoAnn after a couple days away.

On a side note this is Daniel and Jeff eating a local beef dish. It was supposed to be pretty good, but the bone was massive and they kept joking around that it reminded them of the Flintstones. I just thought it was a funny picture.