one of the midwives, ate helen, cooks lunch at the birth center 6 days a week. we pay her daily or weekly, before she goes to market.   always fresh home cooked filipino food.  it is P75 ($1.81) per meal, totaling P450 ($10.91) each week.

this was the scene today.  that is isabell on the left, then kim on the far right holding a baby from the baby home, and katherine near right.  isabell is from germany, came here in may to work doing admin for the baby home.  kim, also from germany is a midwife student who is heading  home next week to return to school.  katherine is from weaton college in illinois, she is here until december, with a program thru her university dealing with hunger. she lives with ate helen and her family.

that is my place setting on the end with the bottle and pacifier, i have baby joy in a sling because when we headed over she woke up deciding she needed a bottle, so she joined us for lunch!

i know, the only sling here that fits me would have to be the stars and stripes forever.  like i'm not sticking out enough.  :o).  after lunch, i walked over to the school next door where our kids were in a program.  a lady remarked, oh, there is a baby in there?  i thought that was your bag.  sigh.



this is a very typical lunch.  some kind of meat, veggies, little beans like lentils that are full of protein, a bitter leaf that is full of iron and some okra that is really so much better than what we have at home.  always with rice.  

it has been raining off and on all day today, it is the rainy season here.  but, it's cooler and not buggy.  

here are a couple photos of ezra and nicole that i told you about.  isabell took these to include in their life books when they leave.  they share a crib and two two week old babies keep you hopping.  along with a 5 week old, a 4 month old and 3 others under a year.  one worker.  gosh.  

cutie patooties, right?!

thank you to everyone who has been remembering me and especially these sweet babies in your prayers.   

i feel lucky and blessed every day.

xoxo     jo

hello!

on sunday, isabell and i were heading back from church and decided we needed to stop at the drugstore for a popsickle.  cause it felt like was a thousand degrees out and we were heading for a long walk up a steep hill.  it was a genuine american brand orange twinpop popsickle, which cost me P16, or 16 pesos.  which at $.37 was well worth the price.  anyway, i thought you might like to see the receipt and the cute little completely unnecessary bag that they put it in.

it is a good example of the mix of english and tagalog that is used here.

i was sitting at the birth home using the wifi, thinking, i need to get my camera out and take some photos!  the birth home is a public space and there is a lot of petty theft, so i don't usually carry anything with me except a bottle of water and the keys in my pocket. 

i decided to take a risk and run out into the street and snap a few pics for you with my ipad, acting like a complete rich american tourist.  so here they are!

this is the play yard at the birth home. this swing is my very favorite spot to sit.  however, i did get pooped on by a lizard there.

this is the gate to the street.  this is technically a subdivision (i know, right!) and most all of the properties are gated.  that being said, this gate at the birth home does not close and the gate at the baby home is held shut by a piece of twine looped over a nail.   :o)

this is the view up the street to the left.  the blue house on the left is the baby home. lots of people walk with umbrella for shade, me included.  they don't value tan skin here and actually are biased toward light skin, with the stores full of products to lighten your skin. one of the midwives asked me what is your ethnicity.  she then put her arm on mine and said, because you are browner than me.  i said, not everywhere.

this is the street view to the right.  gobs of stray dogs in various degrees of disrepair, and i've never seen so many cats missing tails or with loopy crookedy tails.  i will spare you those pics.  i thought recently, that those pitiful critters would break my heart at home, but my heart here is already broken by the discarded babies.  

the midwife student apartment where i am staying right now, is in the walkout basement of this house which is between the baby home and the birth home. 

this is the play yard and the baby home, where i spend my time.

i have completely plagiarized the following from the blog of Isabell, another worker here.  but it is a wonderful description of the work of the ministry i am serving. 

HELP International Ministries.is a family organization, founded by the Gunderson family in the Philippines in 1986.  The Little children,s home and Shiprah Birthing Home are located in the outskirts of Manila.  The Gundersons and Gustafsons, together with a team of professional midwives and caregivers, share the love of Christ by providing safe and dignified maternal health care to impoverished women, as well as shelter and love to abandoned and surrendered children until they find a home with their forever families.

i thank you all so much for your support and your encouragement.  and especially for your prayers and your offers of prayer.

and if any of you want to sent me a package full of pepto bismal or find yourself in manila and want to come and visit me, here is our address:

Joann Porter
Shiphrah Bahay Paanakan
#6 Liwayway Street
Blooming Hills Subdivision
Taytay, Rizal 1920, Philippines

shiprah is the name of a midwife in the bible.  in tagalog, bahay means home, and paanakan means child birth.  not childbirth, but child birth.

i love you all, my dear friends!

p.s.  since y'all had trouble viewing the last ones,  i posted these photos using a different format.  i sure hope this is better.  please advise.  thanks!!

jo

gosh, where to begin.

usually at the beginning, but i've been here in the philippines for 6 days so that ship has sailed!

i had in mind to post a lovely little blog full of photos and charm for you, but we are all going to have to lower our expectations if i am going to get anything posted for you.  get ready for willy-nilly and less than perfect, but good enough.  which is pretty much how many things are done here.  :o)

i have time and energy to work on this today, because i am not busy holding babies.  i was feeling weary yesterday, i thought from the heat and my age, but last night i got chills and i was pretty sure it wasn't chilly, heh.  about midnite i was up to a 101.1 fever, achy and just sick.  jeri brought me oj and ibuprofen this morning, and i feel amazingly better already. someone left a bowl of rice and a little piece of chicken on the table for me for lunch, which was more than i needed.

we had two children this week who were picked up by what they call their forever families, but we gained two new babies the week before i arrived.  one is a baby girl from a mom who came to the birth home in labor, along with a neighbor who planned to buy the baby. uh, no.  the other is a baby boy, who was found at a tricycle station in a plastic grocery sack, placenta still attached.  one of the workers here told me they think he is chinese, because of "his light skin and chink eyes".  sigh.  they are sharing a crib and everyone refers to them as brother and sister.  they named her nicole and are calling him ezra.  i was holding her and he started crying. i said i can't pick him up but if someone will hand him to me, i can hold them both, and so it went.  they are tiny and adorable. there are 6 other little ones in the nursery, from a 1 month old named joy to a 1 year old named hannah.  besides me, there is one worker caring for them.  she really does everything, i just help with feeding and try to pick up whoever is crying.  deborah wants them to get outside, so i take them out one at a time and just sit and hold the babies on the big swing, or push the older ones around the neighborhood in a stroller.  i try to talk or play but they all just latch on and want to snuggle, so that is what we do. i was sitting on the big swing at the birth home with a 9 month old girl named aya, and deborah's daughter bernadette came over and wanted to hold her.  she fussed and wanted to come back to me, and bernadette said, i think she likes you because you are like a big soft bed.  ha!  true story.  i have to admit that the babies and their situations have made me cry, especially when i compare them to our little mackinac, but that's all good.  they have a rough start, but will all end up with a loving family. the average stay for a child here is 18 months.

i think i'm really going to be fine here, but i need to get used to the giant spiders and lizards that seem to scamper around every time you walk into a room.  there is a gecko in our fridge right now, but i don't feel like dealing with him, so he can just chill.

i'll begin this with a short email that i sent to my family on the first morning here.  beth asked me to take some photos of the food here (priorities are in order!) so i will get that going next.  someone gave me a circa 1999 cell phone to borrow, but i realize that unless i,m on an outing, carrying a camera is not going to happen, so i will try to get out and get a smart phone sometime this week, which should make taking pics much easier.  there is so much to see!  there was a beautiful giant snail on the sidewalk last night, and i thought where is my camera!!  but, he'll be back i'm sure.

please pray for me, and for all of the little ones in the baby home. and for the amazing women who take care of them.

here is the email i mentioned:

i was going to put the day as the subject and then i smiled to admit i'm not sure what day it is.

:o)

i'm pretty sure it's wednesday. . .

just a couple quick shots for you, this was the view i woke up to in bed this morning, and some pics of jeri's patio where we've been chatting.

we're heading out to begin the day!

and this which i got from beth.  :o)

xoxo jo