Disaster Zone

Hello! Time is flying here!

Here is the down low. After leaving Monkayo we headed to the Nehemiah House. We arrived there at three in the morning after the craziest bus ride ever. Thankfully the next day we had off so we all just relaxed. The Nehemiah House is a home for sexually exploited girls. There were 18 girls there ages from 8-16. It’s a place for healing and restoration done by only the Holy Spirit. The Owner was a YWAMer who went on outreach to the Philippines and just never came home. Sounds like something I would do. haha. He created the Nehemiah house in the 1990‘s and since then over 500 girls have gone through the house and ALL of them have left having a personal relationship with the Lord, even the few that came in as Muslims. The Holy Spirit is SO present there the atmosphere was SOO anointed!

The House was hit by the flood pretty hard so there was a lot of repair work to do. We helped rebuild the wall that the water had broken down. We also dug up about 6 inches of mud that the water washed all over the property. When we decided to go there we didn’t know if we would have electricity or water. Thank God that we had it because after the physical labor every day we stunk! 

We spent the majority of our time there helping restore the place. In the afternoons we spent time with the girls and led Bible study for them every night. The girls are so awesome I loved getting to know them and spending time with them!

On Friday Grace and I went to the doctor. She had been feeling really sick with a cold and my pinkie toe was swelling up. I thought my toe was broken because I woke up the first day we got there and it hurt SO bad. It wasn’t broken but i did get an infection in it which caused it to swell up and be extremely painful to touch. Grace ended up having Pneumonia. The woman who took us to the doctor was the social worker for the Nehemiah House. She was awesome! I loved spending the day with her and Grace.

The entire time we were staying at the Nehemiah House we were asking how we could get out in the community to talk to people and just give them hope and encouragement through Jesus. The only way we would get that opportunity is if we just went out and walked around. So we did. We headed toward the river and there we found people washing literally everything they had. We went up to a few of them asking if we could help them out and all of them said no. So we just talked to them. We came across a 50 year old lady named Ava and she told us her story. She has diabetes and half of her extended family went missing after the flood. Then on top of that she found out that her husband has a whole other family. We got to encourage her and she knew that without Jesus she couldn’t go through anything like that.

On our last day at the Nehemiah House we took a tour around the flooded areas.  It was devastating even a month after the flood. The river literally rose 30 feet in places. Completely washing houses away and clearing entire neighborhoods. Over 1,000 people died as a result of the flood. There will be pictures up on my Facebook later. 

Now we are back in Davao for a few days. We are staying at the YWAM base and Craig our staff visitor is here!

I’m still loving it here. I can’t believe we only have one month left of YWAM. I want to do everything i can just to cherish the time we have left together. :)