Every year we are required to submit to DSWD our years prior accomplishments. It’s always so awesome to look back and see what a fantastic year we have had and how God has truly been present through it all.
Enjoy!
Gentle Hands has always been known to take the “least of these”, usually kids that no one else wants.
The reasons are usually simple. They don’t “fit the program” or they are a sibling group or they may require much counseling and medical intervention.
At present we have 69 children, and a waiting list- I’ve never had a waiting list.
Two years ago, we started seeing a trend of older female children and sibling groups, 4 up to 6 siblings consisting of brothers and sisters needing emergency placement, due to abuse, neglect and other traumatic circumstances.
We have 30 BIG KIDS right now- ages 8 to 14. We have split the boys into two levels and need to desperately split the girls.
Although most of these children are for adoption, one of the immediate and most important needs is to have a place to heal and just be safe.
I had reserved a space in the renovations of our third floor and had said many times to different people, “God will show us in time what we need to do with this space.”
A few weeks ago, a concerned citizen dropped a young girl at our door who was being abused as a worker in the local market. Her story is horrifying.
While we were trying to decide how best to help her, we saw that after just a few weeks of consistent care and love, there was already tremendous healing and growth happening in her little life.
It’s what God allows us to do at Gentle Hands. Take the broken and let them heal. For His glory.
The truth is, I could transfer her and several others to a government institution as most agencies do. Or I could figure out a way to make space and keep loving them and seeing God’s hand move in their life.
So, after lots of prayer and discussion, we are moving ahead with the project.
The room is itself is on the same floor as our livelihood programs – the sewing room and bakery – and right across from my office so I can keep my eye on them.
It has space for it’s own sitting area and eating area and a bedroom with 8 bunk beds. Jordan, our volunteer missionary, will be staying in the room next door to be the on-site full-time big sister.
This is a project that needs to be done quickly. I have 13 girls sleeping in a 12 x 15 foot room.
The following is still needed so I can make this room a haven for these precious girls:
construction of the beds and cabinets $4000
painting and labor 1500
6 wall fans 250
towels and sheets and curtains 500
pillows and mattresses 600
small couch sitting chairs 1000
water dispenser 300
TOTAL $8150
I can think of lots of little things…lamps, floor mats, toiletries, mirrors, pictures for the walls, knick knacks to make it feel like their “home”.
If you have a burden for the least of these… if you believe that God can make beauty out of ashes… if you believe in the rights of the girl child… to be safe, provided for, and to be whole…
You can HELP us with this project!
I am so excited about the doors this will open for us and for the expanding ministry.
AS you pray about helping to complete the project, pray too about doing a monthly donation to our ministry.
We need to increase our operational funds and I believe we can do it by just people telling people. Only 300 hundred people giving $50 a month will take care of all of our financial needs every month. Tell your friends and family.
This is a good work… and you are PART of it!
Send me an email if you can help fawltytowers@surfshop.net.ph
For love of the Poor,
Charity
We are so thrilled to have the adoption suite finished!
Situated on the 3rd floor of our building with windows that allow the constant breeze through, this room is ready for what it was intended for!
To be a foster parent is something special. It isn’t like parenting your own child because from the very beginning you understand that you will say goodbye. And this goodbye is after you have given security, provided for material needs, taught the child to trust and given all the same love that you would give your very own child. You begin this journey with the child with the knowledge that someday, you will hand this child whom you have come to love so deeply, to someone else to be their permanent and forever family. It is a holy calling, this foster care. I respect our foster families deeply for i too know what it is to love… to give everything you can to a child… for just a season.
The following was written by one of our foster families who had one of our little ones in their care for almost two years.
If it’s any consolation to us, we did it very well! Even before the adopting parents arrived, Marlies and Chato agreed that from Day 1, they would make a definite and conscious effort to back off more and more until the last two days they would no longer be in [the child’s] consciousness.
It was much harder for Marlies to do because in her mind’s eye, the toddler was hers from the day the child was handed over to them at 2 weeks old. After two years of getting up at night, changing diapers, running medical trips, emergency awakenings, crying, feeding, bathing, and intensive interaction, it is difficult to turn your back so to speak and hand over your charge to someone else whom you had to teach your baby to call “Mami and Papi.”
Another blessing is that [the child] had always known them as Baba and Mutti, so, the names Mami and Papi were reserved for the adoptive parents.
More than once we felt, there were just too many coincidences for things to have happened by themselves .. God’s mightly hand is obvious in all this and His almighty orchestrating maestranza .. the odds are simply too tremendous for:
[1] an abandoned child to have been saved thrice (surrendered by the birth mother, secured by Gentle Hands, entrusted to adequate foster parents …
[2] who happened to be of European stock …
[3] who instilled Spanish European values and language into the child…
[4] who was eventually adopted by European parents from Northern Spain …
[5] after 3 previous sets of parents were interviewed and rejected …
[6] then both adoptive & foster parents getting along so well …
[7] with almost identical values and training …
[8] so the child felt hardly no transition trauma …This afternoon, [the child] went willingly, happily, laughing securely in the warm embrace of her new Mami and Papi, with whom she has had only a week to bond .. the young beautiful golden couple who slowly but surely replaced the old guard .. they, who had changed her, bathed her, fed her, loved her, hugged her and squeezed her .. together, the couple carried [the child] to the car that would take them to their hotel ..
[2] who happened to be of European stock …
[3] who instilled Spanish European values and language into the child…
[4] who was eventually adopted by European parents from Northern Spain …
[5] after 3 previous sets of parents were interviewed and rejected …
[6] then both adoptive & foster parents getting along so well …
[7] with almost identical values and training …
[8] so the child felt hardly no transition trauma …This afternoon, [the child] went willingly, happily, laughing securely in the warm embrace of her new Mami and Papi, with whom she has had only a week to bond .. the young beautiful golden couple who slowly but surely replaced the old guard .. they, who had changed her, bathed her, fed her, loved her, hugged her and squeezed her .. together, the couple carried [the child] to the car that would take them to their hotel ..
charity with the adoptive parents
[The child] would forever leave the only home she has known for the two years of her short existence…as the older couple, Baba and Mutti, stood in muted silence -both lost in their own private thoughts, juggling feelings, and emotions– under the dark embrace of the lengthening afternoon shadows beneath the front door that had witnessed [the child] run in and out a hundred times before.
When he got home, Baba stared at the strangely empty doorway that would usually resonate with the squeaks of the tiny shrill voice screaming “Babaaaaa” welcoming him home from work, running to him, expecting to be carried up to his shoulders …
Mutti stared out the window of the child’s room that somehow seemed so strangely empty, holding the last of the baby toys and blankies she was storing away .. the same ones that that held the tiny creature who lay so helplessly in her hands in what seemed such a long time ago .. Mutti took one last look at the bouncing two-year old running with her new mami and papi to the car ..
Did the Narra trees that normally stood up straight to form a canopy over the road seem like they were bent down more than usual in a last gentle caress as the car sped past? Did the tiny yellow flowers seem to fall just a bit more thickly like tears and swirled around the car? Nah, just a figment of one’s imagination ..
And yet what was not imagined were the quiet tears shed by the older folks within the depths of their hearts .. tears of bittersweet joy knowing their “baby” which was sadly never theirs since they were nothing more than temporary caretakers, would be assured a bright future with a loving family she can call her own ..
so it is written, so it shall be done .. and the cycle of life goes on!