jessbobess

robert wrote this for his new best friend Heather Marie Smith, he also had some words of wisdom to share with her, i think we should all follow Robert’s advice and we will all be okay.

a couple things ive learned the last couple of days:

liver spread looks ALOT like peanut butter, but unfortunately tastes nothing like it.

also, when considering buying shoes at a local shoe vendor, make sure you try BOTH shoes on before you purchase them because you may get home to put the shoes on and find that the left shoe is two sizes to small.

and then you might also return the next day to find that the local vendor has sudden memory loss and does not recall you purchasing the said shoes from him.

is it sad that i was so excited that there is a mork and mindy board game? and that i memorized the words?
i think this picture pretty much sums up my feelings toward the mork and mindy board game.

(there is no escaping them, even in the philippines)

i learned that here the bus drivers are trained, if a person walks in front of their vehicle, to speed up and to hit the person in such a way as to make sure the person doesn’t survive.

why you might ask?

so the bus company only has to pay one lump sum hospital bill as opposed to a never-ending hospital bill of a person on life-support.

note to self.

p.s. If anyone ever approaches you to offer you “Rugby”, they are most likely not asking you to join in their rugby game, but want you to buy a colorful balloon filled with fine white powder that is most likely not sugar.

yesterday i went to my first local matching, where the purpose is to match kids up for adoption with perspective families.

there were over twenty kids up for adoption and only five families. but by the end of the day only two children were matched with two families, the rest of the families were vetoed because they lacked in some way.

Of the 20 kids presented in the local matching, My Father’s House had one child, who unfortunately was not matched with a family. She is considered an “older” child, at only five years old, bc most families wish to adopt a child that is below one years old. i also learned that, as far back as they can recall, no one has ever adopted a child born from rape, prostitution or incest.

i was in awe of the process of the matching. i cant imagine carrying the weight of those decisions on my shoulders.
there was a committee made up of four people: two doctors, one attorney, and a professor. and twenty social workers representing the children from their organizations that were up for adoption.

i was amazed at how quickly families or children were put aside because they lacked this or that form or there was no signature here, or no picture there.
It is frusturating to think that there are so many kids who are looking for homes but yet the process to adopt in the Phillipines is so complicated. Even many filipino families have turned to adopting babies from China because the process is shorter and less expensive.

I know that the committee has the families and the children in their best interest,
but i cant imagine being responsible for putting family together or to think that the rest of their lives will be different because of a decision made one day in a small, hot room in the middle of Manila by four people whom they have never met.

I sat looking at these people responsible for choosing the families and wondered what they felt. what were they thinking when they put one child with a specific family? Did it bother them or had they done it so much that it barely registered. Did they the weight of their decisions catch up with them at the end of the day? Did they ever wonder if they made the right choice?

it doesnt surprise me that almost all of the social work organizations and adoption agencies in the philippines are Christian, because i dont know how they could do it without His help.

My supervisor confided in me on the ride home from the meeting that she was worried that she wasnt a good social worker anymore because sometimes she felt numb to some children’s situations (although i have never met a more compassionate and loving social worker than her). i see now how in order to survive in the social work field in the philippines, where you are surrounded by so much hurt and oppression,

you must find a supernatural strength outside yourself.

Let us stop for a moment,
let us behold what we have made.
let it blaze against the yew trees.
one life.
there. it is over. gone out…
But to return. let us again pretend that life is a solid substance,
shaped like a globe,
which we can turn about in our fingers.
let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story.

– Virginia Woolf

for the people who did know you and would have known you

thank you.
for taking me at my worst.
for picking me up,
washing me off, and setting me back on my feet.
& for still seeing me for who i was
and who i would be.

even i, who was not close to the blaze
could feel the warmth of your fire.

i am drawn here…
not to see you or you or you,
but to light my fire
at the general blaze of you,
who live wholly,
indivisibly & without caring in the moment.
to light my fire.
V. Woolf The Waves

woah, and again another week is gone.

but eventful for sure, i cant put my finger on the exact moment when i started to feel like part of the family,
maybe it was after our adventure to Enchanted Kingdom (the Filipino version of an outdated Disneyland)
with the teenagers who forced me to ride on the Rio Grande and walk around for five hours with wet clothes, or when we road the “Space Shuttle” and i thought for sure i was going to throw up, pass out or pee in my pants at any given moment.

but they thought it was hilarious.

today has been a long day.

since its monday, i GET to wake up at 4 am to cook breakfast with Nanay Susan.
Today we had to cook 60 pancakes, 60 fried chicken nuggets and 60 slices of fried ham (for breakfast). nanay put me in charge of pancakes, but i have to confess i got my cooking skills from my mom, (sorry mom) so i am not a gourmet cook to say the least, and my cooking skills can be summed up in three items:

1) macoroni and cheese the box kind
2) hot dogs
3) macoroni and cheese with cut up hot dogs. (dont knock it till you try it).

we had to have the pancakes done by 6 am, and by 5:45 i had a grand total of five done.
well nine if you count the unedible ones.

nanay susan took over the pancakes, and i got to fry the ham and the oil kept popping up and hitting me in the face. i actually started to cry i was so frusturated. or maybe it was just the heat of the grease hitting my face that made my eyes water.

when we finished, i went upstairs to lay down for a half an hour before work, and i couldnt sleep b.c. i smelled like fried ham, but i couldnt take a shower because i locked myself out of my bathroom saturday night. and this was all before 7 am.

and again Henri Nouwen comes to my rescue.

“Quite often we will discover that we are
asked to follow our Lord to places we would rather not go, “
(the kitchen, rio del grande and fried ham for me)
but when we have learned to see him in the small displacements
of our daily lives,
the greater call will not seem so great after all.
We then will find the courage to follow him and be amazed by our freedom to do so.”

i miss you.

Finally! I figured out this picture thing, I wanted to post these with my last blog but the computer and i have been fighting. i think i won, at least for now.

dressed up for the United Nations Day at their school…I think they represent Mexico?!
love my bunso!
the smiling eyes.
brown skin/blonde barbies?

i have officially been here one month today.. i dont know where the time has gone.


there are moments when i feel suspended in time,
that that minute will never end, or the hour will never pass and ill be stuck in this jeepnie or tricycle for the rest of my life

but then i blink my eyes and its sunday again and i wish i could live the previous week one more time.

but also,


the newness of me has worn off.

there are times here that i feel useless, inadequate and burdensome. there are times when i do feel alone and unneeded.

i have grown close with one of the older girls who is to be adopted soon, she has been severely abused in the past by her male relatives. she writes me notes on a daily basis and slips them under my door sometime during the night, so that when i wake up they are there. sometimes there are two or three notes. each note is filled with so much sadness and hurt that i don’t know if i can respond.

her desire to be loved is so strong that it scares me and makes me back away. in my head im thinking: what if i let her down? what if i cannot provide the friendship she expects from me? what if i dont have the ‘right’ words to comfort her?

she has since stopped talking to me, or looking me in the eye when i ask her how she is, and just generally ignoring me. i might as well be blend in with the wall when i go into her room to say hi.
but still every morning i wake up and there is a note on my bedroom floor and every day i respond…

the other night when i was wondering what i should do about this situation, i picked up a book i’ve been reading and stumbled upon this passage:

“we have forgotten that it is often in ‘useless’ unpretentious, humble presence to each other that we feel consolation and comfort.
simply being with someone is difficult b.c. it asks of us that we share in other’s vulnerability,
enter with him or her into the experience of weakness and powerlessness,
become part of uncertainty and give up control and self-determination.
and still whenever this happens, new strength and new hope is born.”
– henri j. nouwen, Compassion

i am realizing that i am an idealist by nature but a realist by profession.

i now no longer dream of ending poverty or changing the lives of every person i meet. i cant provide water for needy communities,
heck i have a hard time waking up in the morning and trying to smile. let alone fix anything.

but i think the passage taken from Compassion reminds me that some people just need someone there and that is something that i CAN do. i cant guarantee i have the answers that this girl is looking. but i can write notes and play uno and listen to filipino music and eat junk food and talk about boys and God and that is going to have to do.