New Carmen Outreach

With the new church I attend called His Mission Christian Fellowship (HMCF), I was given the opportunity to go to a place about 1 hour outside of the city called New Carmen. The people that live there used to live directly on a huge mountain made up of garbage. They would collect tin cans and plastic items hoping to make up to 100 pesos a day or a little less than $2 to feed their families. These people had never been trained in farming or any other way to make money.

The FIRE team (the leaders of HMCF church) started working out in New Carmen a few years ago, and the government had not yet gone out there to do the cleanup that is now in process. The people were still living directly on top of the garbage and had no access to steady income, education or medical care.

When Mike (a leader of FIRE team) came in to New Carmen on outreaches, he met a Filipino man who owned land on another mountain nearby, and when this man knew that Mike really had a heart for the people, he told him that he had had a dream a while back that a white man would come into the area and need land for the people to relocate to. He then gave this land to Mike and wouldn't take any money for it at all!

Now, the whole village has been moved there, and houses slowly have been built through the support of many many people and teams coming in who built homes for these people. They have a church there now and a small school where Grace (the Filipina who invited me to come to New Carmen) teaches first grade. They can only teach preschool and 1st grade now, and can't accept students older than 10 years old because they don't have enough staff or teaching supplies/space. They hope to slowly expand the school to educate more of the kids. Many of these people do not read or write.

The government is in the process of building a processing plant over the covered up mountain of garbage which will hopefully in the next year be up and running and will process the garbage so that this will not happen again.

Grace had asked me to buy some worm medicine if I could for the kids, because some of them for sure needed it really badly, and that started my adventure trying to find it at an affordable price. The first price quoted to me was one dose for $3. If I had wanted to treat only a few children, that would have been fine, but not for the 60 kids that needed medicine. So I enlisted the help of Joe Germain who is the husband of one of our midwives at Mercy, and he directed me to a store that sold in bulk. I ended up being able to buy 32 bottles for only $10!!! God is so good to provide the medicine and the money with which I bought it. To my supporters: You guys are directly responsible for providing this medicine to the children of this village, so thank you for your faithfulness.

I was accompanied by Michelle who is a 1st year midwife at Mercy, and we did open-air prenatals on about 15 women all in different stages of pregnancy. It was their first prenatal this pregnancy, and will be their last unless I am able to return. Some were 7 months pregnant, others were not as far along. They all have their babies at home with only their families attending them. Please pray with me that God will help me to know what my role is in helping these women. My heart breaks for them, and I want so badly to do what I can, but I also want to do it only if this is what God has for me.

One of the ladies Michelle did a prenatal on she found to have extremely high blood pressure - 180/110! This lady - Vicky Rizal, thought she was about 6 months pregnant, but neither Michelle or I could find fetal heart tones, or palpate a baby. We talked with her about her dates, and figured she might be 4 months along, but because of her high blood pressure and the fact that we couldn't find fetal heart tones, I asked Vicky to come to Davao with me to be checked out by the doctor. She couldn't afford it, so I told her I would pay for her medical expenses which turned out me paying for her labs, her transportation and food. Once again - to my supporters, this was your support allowing me to do this for Vicky.

Vicky ended up not being pregnant at all, and the lab tests turned out to be close to normal, one doctor found her blood pressure to be 160/100, but the next found it to be 140/90 which is only borderline high blood pressure, so he and I just gave her advice to keep it low and what to watch for so she would know if she needed to see a doctor.

If anyone has questions about this outreach at all, please email me. Blessings.