Now, it's personal...

My dear friends and family,

I can't believe it...it's been a whole year since that long-anticipated moment of stepping off a plane again in Manila, Philippines. In one week I'll be stepping off a plane in Canada! It's hard to comprehend how much has been accomplished here, how deep new relationships have become, and how much I've grown. In only one year, we started a school/daycare for street children, we regularly fed many hungry kids and patched up many wounds, I learned to speak a new language - or at least my own Taglish language (Tagalog/English), and all of these things are continuing each day. I can unabashedly admit that my relationship and dependence on God has grown exponentially. I can't downplay the importance of that and how it's brought me to where I am and the decisions I've made.

I know that I have so very much to learn about serving the poor, teaching children in another culture and in another language, and living simply while giving of myself greatly. For these things that I lack, I'm asking if you can pray for me and for the children we're serving. I had a feeling that when I started this internship, it wouldn't just be a "one year" thing. This is the beginning of something bigger - a kind of lifestyle and career that I want to adopt for years to come. I hope to serve, feed, and teach street children in the Philippines for as long as God will guide me.

Now, please bare with me as I share a few final thoughts and one invaluable lesson in particular that I've learned...

Most of us know the reality that millions of men, women, and children suffer and starve needlessly each day (you've heard it countless times on the news, read it in statistics, even seen it in ads from aid organizations). Perhaps you've found ways in which you can help, but have you ever wondered why we, as a whole, aren't doing more?

I recently read an illustration (in "The Hole in Our Gospel" by Richard Stearns) that gives some insight into why we might not always be so compelled to help. Imagine for a moment that you are eating your breakfast and reading the newspaper at home. You are surprised to read that thousands of children die each year in car accidents (most of them avoidable accidents). Reading this statistic, you might become sad, but likely not very emotional. However, imagine now that you just found out your neighbour's child died in a car crash. It would hit much closer to home, your emotional response would be much deeper, and you might seek ways to comfort the family and be there throughout their sufferings. But what if you learned that your own child had been killed. This would devastate you at the deepest level. It would be a life-shattering and profoundly personal tragedy that would forever define you.

There are many ways in which children's lives are cut short, and most of them are very preventable - malnutrition, unclean water, treatable diseases, to name a few. If the child who is needlessly suffering wasn't just a distant statistic, but was someone you knew by name who was personally very close to you (like a son or daughter), you would surely respond with urgency, doing whatever you could and paying whatever cost to save their life.

Our compassion for others seems to be directly correlated to whether people are close to us socially, emotionally, culturally, and geographically. One of the reasons why we might not always be compelled to help those in poverty is that the plight of suffering children in far-off countries simply hasn't gotten personal for us. However, for God, I believe it is extremely personal. His compassion for others is not conditional. The God I follow calls each child his own. This God also commands us to love our neighbours. When asked about the limits on who counts as our "neighbour", Jesus responded with the story of a man who rescued a suffering foreigner from a different culture, race, and ideology - even an enemy to the man who felt compassion for him. Furthermore, Jesus equated doing practical things for the poor (feeding, clothing, and caring for them) with doing those very things for Jesus himself. "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me," Jesus said (Matthew 25:40). A personal relationship with Jesus would thus mean that the plight of the poor in this world is extremely personal to us.

This year, I've been fortunate enough to directly get to know children and families in poverty. For those children, their cause has become my own, and I would like to believe it is becoming more and more personal for me. As daunting as the global scene of poverty is, there are real solutions to these problems, and each of us can genuinely make a difference. In spite of all the things I've seen that have saddened me here, I have never become a cynic or lost hope that we can make a very significant difference. And believe me, when you get to know just one child in needless suffering, you recognize that the value in saving just that one life is beyond measure, no matter the cost.

So I want to end by briefly sharing a couple of real stories of some friends of mine. Imagine if these kids lived just down your street, if they attended your school or church, or even if you enjoyed sharing meals and conversations with them as I have been able to...

The kids "just down the street" who attend our feeding program

Kimberly attends our feeding program in Sucat. She is 7 years old and is a delightfully kind and warm child. She loves to study and read books. She told us that she wants to be a nurse someday, helping sick people and her family too. When she was 2 years old, together with her brother of 6 months, they were taken in by another young couple in their community. This is because their birth mother did not take care of them anymore - the mother's addictions to drinking and gambling consumed more time than she spent looking after her children. Kimberly's new parents, Michelle and Alfredo, couldn't have children of their own, so they thank God for giving them two adopted children. Alfredo earns a few dollars a day from construction work, but his work is not consistent. When he doesn't have work, his wife and their two children pick up left over food in restaurants to sell and eat themselves. Although they are struggling in their situation, they are thankful to be together as one close family. I will definitely miss spending time with their wonderful children.

Louie Jay (on the right) playing with friends

Louie Jay also lives in the Sucat community. He is 10 years old with three younger siblings. His father, Concordio, is a scavenger - finding and selling junk for a living. His mother, Maridel, takes care of the chores at home. Louie Jay usually takes care of his 1 month old sister while his mom is busy, and he has big dreams of becoming a policeman like his grandfather to catch some bad guys. Louie Jay once had an elder brother, but he died at 7 years old from tonsillitis. Since he did not receive any hospital treatment, his throat become infected and so painful that he stopped eating. Also, since the earnings from their father's scavenging is barely enough for their daily needs, hospitalization in such times is not an option. Despite these challenges and a recent demolition that caused them to move to our area, Louie Jay's parents continue on and focus on the future of their children. They strive their hardest to provide a decent way of living for their children, wanting to give the best for them so they can grow up with a different future. I wish you could meet Louie Jay and enjoy his lovable, fun, and rambunctious nature.

The purpose of me sharing these stories is not to inspire guilt. I promise you that. The purpose is to inspire genuine love and concern for real children that are personal to me. I hope and pray that you can find your cause that is so personal to you that you will use the voice, the resources, the time, and the strength you have been entrusted with to fight for it. Many of you have already found that cause worth giving and living for, and I pray that God gives you the wisdom and guidance to keep on fighting for it and running the race through to completion! Also, I hope you can share with me your advice and your lessons learned, and we can work together to serve a broader community with needs that Jesus embraced as his own. Thank you so much for reading these stories, praying and supporting me, and inspiring me through your friendships and genuine concern.





Take care always! And I hope to see you in person soon!

John

ps. ...many more stories and photos to come when I return to the Philippines, so this is not "the end", but only "to be continued..." :)

"You see things; and you say, 'Why?' I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'" - Shaw

Hi there friends & fam!

Do you ever wonder what I'm up to over here when I'm not teaching in our school/daycare or helping with our other ministries? Lately in my down time, I like to find quiet places to read and absorb some inspiration and ideas from books. I love to learn about others who've had similar passions and desires to serve the poor and to work with children. I need the humility to ask for help whenever I can, because I surely don't have all the answers about what the children really need and how they can best be empowered and encouraged. And I have to recognize and understand a large disparity between what I think they need and what they really need.

Mother Theresa used to say that we cannot understand the poor until we stand under the poor and live among them. I love her style of radical living and genuine empathy. Maybe it's not for everyone, but surely it's worth a try. I met a couple from New Zealand who live right in the center of a squatter community here, in some of the worst conditions imaginable. When the community goes without things like clean water, so do they. I was moved by their commitment and desire to live that closely in community with the poor.

These acts of compassion and lifestyle choices, if done out of genuine empathy, are not at all about getting recognition, about feeling better about ourselves, or about absolving guilt. I hope and pray to become less interested in seeking recognition, in building myself up, or in helping others with the underlying incentive of sleeping better at night. I want to be more like a brother to the community than a missionary or an aid worker or even a friend (although we can be all those things at the same time).

Here are some recent photos from our program in the Sucat community. I wish you could experience the joy (and even the sufferings) of getting to know the lives of these kids in person! As I spend more time with them, their photos carry more and more meaning to me, and I'm glad you can share a part of that - at least vicariously!







In that last photo, you'll see one of my closest friends in Sucat. Princess is her name - not to be mistaken for Princess who attends our school/daycare, as Princess is a fairly common name here (...speaking of incredible Filipino names, Princess from Sucat also has a best friend named Twinkle). Through an exciting new scholarship program (that we're already receiving support for!), we're going to be able to send kids like her to a real, formal school next year. Please pray for that, and also thank God for everything He's provided already with that! Speaking of school, I also want to share some recent pictures of our own school/daycare. Things continue to go so great as we work our way through the alphabet, the days of the week, and new songs and games that encourage friendship and social development.

Class is in session here...enjoy!!

Jet Jet tries on Teacher Tin's glasses.

When our students aren't working, they are making awesome poses.

The boys table. Because girls have cooties.

Going back to my "down time" readings on compassion and serving, I can't neglect to mention one of the most influential examples of a servant. We admire and emulate a lot of people who themselves admired and tried to follow in the footsteps of Jesus himself (...Mother Theresa included). "Like Jesus, we belong to the world living not for ourselves but for others. The joy of the Lord is our strength", said Mother Theresa.

Jesus is a perfect example of compassion lived out. Not only did he empathize with the poor, because to him "they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36), but he went further than that. "Though he was rich, yet for [their] sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty [they] might become rich." (2 Corinthians 8:9) By sharing in their experiences, he suffered much to save them - or more appropriately, to save "us" - because he saw the entirety of humanity in need of help. Very awesome.

In other news, last week our team visited what's called a "home for the aged" out in the country. Retirement homes are very rare here, and the very idea that they exist at all seems very odd to Filipinos in general. Because the Philippines has such a community-oriented culture, most grandparents live with their children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren for the rest of their lives. So a "home for the aged" is really not like a retirement home in Canada, but it's actually more of an "orphanage" for the abandoned or less-fortunate elderly. When we visited, we brought lunch for the residents and just enjoyed conversations, stories, and dancing. Yes...dancing. We were treated to some personal lessons in ballroom dancing from some of the residents (sorry I don't have the photos to prove it!). I was really impressed by the quality of the facilities and the care from the workers. Actually, they have a really great system in which nursing students from a nearby University do a 9-day practicum there for school. At the completion of their practicum, a different group of nursing students is sent to replace the previous group, and this year-round rotation fulfills the need for educated, passionate, and eager volunteers. All of the facilities at the home for the aged were donated by a church.

Thanks again for following along with my blog! I will be taking some time off in the next few weeks to visit some good friends working and teaching in Korea and Japan, but I will be back in the Philippines for the bittersweet "home stretch" of my internship here before I need to say my goodbyes and return home to Canada in November.

Take care!

BEST...BIRTHDAY...EVER.

Hi family and friends!

As my whirlwind trip is already winding down (only 7 more weeks until I return to Canada), I decided I wanted to do something really special and really fun for the children before I left. Something truly unforgettable. Something that every kid dreams of experiencing, but many kids don't get the chance. My upcoming birthday gave me the perfect excuse to pull it off. Traditionally, when it's your birthday in the Philippines, you are the one who treats your family and friends. So I invited 50 kids to my party (kids from our street children programs and students from our daycare/school), along with 20 parents and helpers. There was really only one location epic enough for our epic party...

This is a BIG clue as to where we held the party...

That's right, we brought the kids to a McDonald's party!!

I decided McSpaghetti is a somewhat healthier option than burgers..?
But the children were happy enough just to enjoy the festivities!!

Kids who spend the majority of their time in the streets enjoy a rare
opportunity to dress up in their finest and celebrate with their friends.

The kids gather around to sing me "Happy Birthday".

Tata (a worker in our children's program) and
Jet Jet (one of my students) having heaps of fun.

Adrian chows down like nobody's business.

The children enjoyed games, prizes, dancing, and of course so much food in their happy meals. The parent-helpers and workers from our team were also exceptionally grateful to enjoy this time of fellowship and fun together. I couldn't have imagined a better way to celebrate my birthday then to share it like this. In all honesty though, I did enjoy a bit of special treatment - I was overwhelmed with the thoughtful gifts that many of the children gave me (most of them homemade!). These included a necktie from Ally (my youngest student), a framed photo of me with some of the kids, and lots of priceless letters and cards. I'll never forget the children who put so much effort into making a big card that said many kind words but then followed with, "We're sorry Kuya (brother) John. We love you, but we don't have a gift to give you!" I told them, "Meron! May regalo kayo sa akin - yung pag-ibig mo! Ang pinakapaborito ko." (...in English, "You do though! Your thoughtfulness and love is the best gift I received.")

Hanging out with Cassandra.

The kids enjoy many games...

...with many prizes!

It's just not a McDonald's party without Grimace and Birdie
arriving fashionably late.

Yep, we're all kids at heart.

In other news, two siblings from our street children's program (Florence and Francis) contracted Dengue fever earlier this month. Dengue is a disease that occurs only in the tropics and is typically transmitted by mosquitoes. Dengue can be life-theatening, but it is usually easy to treat when properly attended to. I was able to visit Florence and Francis in the hospital to cheer them up and do what I could to help the family out. Florence was confined in the hospital for a whole week. However, we're so thankful that they are both healthy now and they even attended the birthday party!

Also, I have to mention that Christmas season is already upon us here in the Philippines! Christmas decorations go up and Christmas music begins playing in the malls on the first day of September. I look forward to seeing family and friends again this Christmas!

Take care!

Learning to Share...All Over Again

Hi family and friends!

It's been a wild couple of weeks!! My beloved childhood buddy Mike Goerz came to visit me for 10 days after doing a mission stint in Rwanda (...and it sounds like International Teams is doing great work there!). I was able to show him our ministries here in Metro Manila, and he's been a great help to us - especially with regards to bringing the children from our daycare/school on the "ultimate field trip". I can only call it "ultimate" (and/or epic) because we went to three big venues in one day. The first was Museo Pambata - a children's musem in Manila which we took the kids from Sucat to back in March. Aside from the following pictures, I'd love for you to also enjoy a video that might give you an idea of how fun this trip was for the kids...

This is what happens when you take our kids to a museum.


Teacher Toph and the kids explore the passageways
of the human body...just like in The Magic School Bus!


Ally takes Teacher Tin Tin, Jet Jet, and Bernadette for a ride!

The second location we brought our students to is called Manila Ocean Park. If you ever get the chance to come to Manila, I strongly recommend checking it out! The whole of the Philippines is encompassed by something called the "Coral Triangle" - an area identified as the most diverse marine ecosystem on our planet. I experienced as much awe and wonder as the kids did as we admired all kinds of marine life from above, alongside, and even underneath aquariums as we walked through a glass-enclosed underwater tunnel.

Sharks are SO cool, and it's also cool to imitate them.

And finally, we took the students to enjoy a hearty meal at Jollibee's (a popular restaurant-chain in the Philippines). After they ate as much as they could - and then a little more - we dropped each child off in the squatter communities where they live. We had fun counting down the number of children still awake as they each fell asleep, one at a time, on the ride back home in a rented jeepney.

Gab Gab has his game-face on - it's spaghetti-devouring time!

Lawrence conks out, and Nicole is soon to follow.

Mike was also able to help out with our feeding program in the Sucat community. Already, the children are asking "Where's Kuya Mike?" (or in English, "Where's big brother Mike?"), and "When will he come back?." There was a moment that I had an epiphany when Mike and I were hanging out with the Sucat kids, and I had been talking with them in straight-Tagalog for about 10 minutes (mostly answering questions about the new guy). I realized that I'm really feeling more and more like a part of the community there. The children and I miss each other when we're gone, we share a lot of our lives with each other (including meals, prayers, fun and games), and we can easily converse with each other now in the same language. I also feel the same way about the kids in our daycare/school and in our Saturday morning street children's program.

The Sucat kids love Kuya Mike.

Fearless street kids enjoy Jared's super-human strength.

Learning, teaching, and especially sharing what I can with the Filipino street children is one of the greatest blessings and challenges I've ever experienced! We were all once children ourselves (if you can look back to that time - even though it's a little further back for some, ;) sorry). We were also once taught for the first time to share with others. Sharing is such an important concept for children to grasp, and how amazing it must be when a parent witnesses their child genuinely and selflessly sharing even a snack or a toy for the first time. I wonder if somewhere along the way, between childhood and adulthood, that ingrained concept of sharing gets a little fuzzy. Maybe we don't lose it, but if we look at ourselves on the level of a global-community, we seem to have a hard time noticing some of those children in the corner of the room that never did have a snack or a toy. Laying blame or guilt on anyone surely can't be the best way to solve the problem, but maybe moving someone's heart to recognize the mutual joy and gains achieved through compassion and grace is a better solution, as it always was. From a Christian perspective, the example is Christ (through whom God himself humbly came to the world to free people from themselves and to move their hearts and exemplify what it means to love selflessly). From almost any perspective, I like to believe that these ideas of selflessness and sharing are so highly regarded! For myself, I know that I have a LOT more to share with the children here. Maybe I have only scratched the surface. Please pray with me that I will be able to share more and more as I grow personally and in my relationships here in the Philippines.

Thanks so much for reading! Take care!

They put their pain, their heart, their faith in this...

Hi there family and friends!

Sorry it's been a little while since I've had the chance to write! I just returned from a four-day mission to a place in the Philippines called Tiaong, Quezon Province. However, before I share about that, I want to share something else first that's really been weighing on my mind lately. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with how I blessed I am that I have the opportunity to serve the poor in another country. I wonder if it would even be possible without all the support that I get both financially and prayerfully. I can't thank you enough for your support. Really, with all my heart, thank you!

What I want to share though is a much more powerful testimony than my own - and that is the testimony of the Filipinos I'm working alongside with. They are the ones who have literally given up everything to serve full-time. They serve without any financial support. They are the ones whose faith and resilience humble me each day. You've seen some them in my photos...Tin Tin, Toph, Cecile (in Sucat), etc, etc. Some of them are single mothers, some of them don't have a home of their own, and some of them go for days without eating, even as they feed the street children daily. Often humility and embarrassment keeps them from telling me about these realities about their lives, and they are too afraid to ask for help. But the truth is that they need financial help and support more than I do. Although they will have a great reward and a future in God, that doesn't mean they need to suffer now. So I'm asking if anyone of you has any spare income to share with these so deserving, please email me at johndlcoffey@gmail.com and I can give you more info and answer any questions about how you can help. Fifty dollars a month or less would make a great impact for these missionaries so they can take care of themselves and in turn take care of their ministries. They also have facebook and email so they would personally keep you informed and updated on their ministries. Also, as their stories from their point-of-view often go untold, I've helped one of them start her own blog that you can also check out here - tintinramos.blogspot.com

...back to what I've been up to...On the short-term trip to Tiaong that I just returned from, we brought a team of Filipino youth from four different churches in Manila to experience serving the poor in a different community. Most of these youth come from strained financial situations themselves, but they took initiative even in raising their own funds to support their transportation and food on the mission. I was also amazed how quickly everyone grew very close, and the unity that resulted allowed us to accomplish so much in just four days.

One of our tasks was a "beautification project". We divided our youth into four groups (one led by myself, another led by Jared), and we spent two days cleaning up the community from dawn until dusk. The attitude of humility and joyful willingness that I witnessed was a powerful testimony of what happens when people choose to give of themselves as servants. I was reminded of the story of Jesus washing the very feet of his closest followers as I witnessed pastors and leaders painting for hours under the hot sun, scrubbing toilets, and even trudging through mud to collect garbage.


One of the centers of this community is a small church led by a Filipino pastor and his wife from Manila. They are actually working part-time, and thus through the church they are able to aid the community through feedings for children, college scholarship programs for youth, and of course weekly services and activities. I know there are many people around the globe who are skeptical about the motives of the church, including it's effectiveness in helping the community, and I only pray that they could see the example of a church like this. Though this church is almost 10 years old, it still needed a lot of work. We helped out by painting it and providing some finishing touches on the construction.

Finally, on our last day we ran a program for the children in the community. Although most children there work in the rice fields all day on Saturday (because they don't have school that day), almost 100 kids came out. We taught several songs, played some games and activities, and provided a healthy meal. I was moved when one of the young girls gave me her craft to keep and told me that I could have it to remember her by.


Thanks again for reading! I'll just leave you with some pictures of the incredible scenery in Tiaong, Quezon Province...