Every year, graduating Leadership Development Program (LDP) students in the Philippines go to work camp where they engage in community service. The yearly work camp usually engages students in missionary work to unreached tribal groups, but this year the students extended a helping hand to typhoon victims.

At the end of October, LDP students from all over the Philippines came together in Manila, Santa Mesa, Novaliches and Bulacan for the annual camp. They were tasked to perform community service for those who had been badly affected by Typhoon Ketsana, which dumped more than a month’s worth of rain in just 12 hours, fueling the worst flooding to hit the Philippines in more than 40 years. (more…)

Tony, Michelle, Richmond and Jimmy talk about what they will be doing after they graduate from Moody Bible Institute and share some ways that you can pray for them.

Whew!

This has been a busy year. Our world is in turmoil and much of that turmoil is affecting Compassion’s work.

Here’s a snapshot of the things I’ve reported over the past 11 months:

military rebellion, slum fire, dengue fever outbreak, H1N1 virus outbreak, flooding, strike, civil conflict, volcanic eruption, earthquake, heavy rains, political unrest, hotel bombings, protests and violence, typhoons, meningitis outbreak, polio outbreak, cholera outbreak, famine, landslide, tribal war, ferry sinking, riots.

As an organization entirely dependent on your trust, we have made a commitment to be honest and transparent in everything we do. This means, among other things, that we do our best to let you know as soon as possible when your child is affected by a crisis or disaster.

In a perfect world, here’s how the process would work:

• Within 24 hours of a crisis, our Field Communications Specialist (FCS) submits a crisis report via e-mail. This e-mail comes to an inbox that I check regularly.
• As soon as I receive this e-mail, I determine whether funds will need to be raised to provide relief, and summarize the report and e-mail it to our partner countries (the countries where the sponsors live).
• Meanwhile, the FCS is in contact with the Partnership Facilitators (PF), field-based staff members who are contacting our affected church partners.
• The FCS then submits a follow-up report via e-mail, with further details from the PFs about which centers are affected, how they are affected, and any other relevant details, photos or video.
• As soon as the church partners are able to provide specific information on registered children, the FCS e-mails that information to me. I do a quality check and then forward that information to the partner countries.
• Each partner country then contacts all the sponsors with affected children to let them know the status of their child.

Seems pretty cut and dried, right? And often, the process works exactly as I just described it.

However, as we all know, we do not live in a perfect world. Sometimes a disaster will wreak havoc on the field’s end, thus affecting our communications process.

Let’s take the recent typhoons in the Philippines as an example. (more…)

How difficult is it for the Moody scholars to transition between the poverty of their homes and life in the U.S.?

Another clip from our video interview with the Moody Bible Institute scholars.

After watching it, will you sponsor a Leadership Development Program student? You can do so by yourself, but you can also do it as a group, with family, friends, co-workers, your small group, etc.

So, an emperor, a chief and a queen are all in a room together. The emperor is from Uganda. The chief is from the Dominican Republic. And the queen is from the Philippines. Who’s in charge?

You can also view the Who’s in Charge video on YouTube.

Not too long ago, Kelina wasn’t your ideal mother. She would spill her anger over onto her three children, hitting them every day. She never used an empty hand to hit them, but would use rattan to hurt them. Her children were scared of her.

“I started to hit them when my husband wasn’t at home.

“I don’t know why it was so easy to get angry with my children. All I know is that when they wouldn’t do something that I had asked, I became angry and started to smite them. My anger was known as a common and frightening morning greeting for them.”

Kelina lives in Wamena, West Papua, a small city on the western side of the remote island of New Guinea. Wamena women are known as caring people and responsible mothers. Even though they have two major responsibilities, to go to the farmland and take care of their children every day, they still have love to share with their family.

That responsibility encourages Wamena women to be strong against all challenges. Even when they receive challenges from the unpredictable weather, they always try to give their best. In the middle of the difficult conditions, they still are able to give their love and time for their family.

Wamena women think creatively with the resources they have to survive. Even though they do not own farmland themselves, they rent farmland from others. To pay the cost of the rental of the land, they will share half of the crops with the owner of the land.

Although Kelina owned her own land, she didn’t want to take care of it. She had a bad attitude toward it. As a wife of Yosep, Kelina never showed her thankfulness, preferring to blame her husband, who didn’t work and couldn’t support their needs.

“I liked to get angry with him. I even have hit him because he couldn’t support our family financially.”

Kelina didn’t know how to give her love to her family in appropriate ways. Since she was young, Kelina’s parents never taught her.

Kelina also did not have a good relationship with God, even though she was born in a Christian home. She didn’t go to Sunday school very often. She preferred to stay at home and sleep rather than to go to church or have a daily prayer life in the morning.

“I never knew that building a relationship with God would help me to deal with anything. I just know when I feel angry, I can hurt anyone I like to hurt.”

Kelina’s bad attitude didn’t stop at the front door of her house. Kelina liked to gossip about the things going on in her neighborhood.

Kelina once had a fight with one of her relatives who asked for food. She gave her answer with one slap to her relative.

Her bad attitude became a trigger for her to fight with everyone. But then everything changed. (more…)