Future uncertain, however, for orphanage and kids

 

 

DAVAO, Philippines—It took a miraculous escape from death to awaken independent missionaries Peter and Gwen Bollant to the street kid crisis here.
It may take another miracle to save the street kid ministry that resulted.

The night of Sept. 24, 1996—their 13th wedding anniversary—Peter and Gwen woke up to find two young men burglarizing their home. One ran out immediately through a back door. Gwen saw the other one crouched by a wall and swung a kitchen stool at him, trying to shove him out the door. The burglar then lunged at Peter and stabbed him in the chest before showing himself out. 

The knife struck a rib, leaving Peter bleeding, but alive. The incident left Peter and Gwen and their three kids, who somehow slept through the entire thing, shaken for months. Gwen says they felt unsafe until God brought to mind Jeremiah 29:7—“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you … Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

So they prayed for Davao. Those prayers led to a bigger heart for the city. And through friendships they formed with local police officers after the stabbing, they discovered just how bad the street kid problem in Davao was. Which led them to ask, “Who is ministering to these kids?”

They found out almost nobody was. "We didn't even see street kids for 15 years," Gwen says of the first leg of their ministry in Davao. "Now I see them all the time. They were always there, but all of a sudden, they're real people."

Filling the void

Discovering that ministry void led Peter and Gwen and local pastor Dan Montenegro, their longtime friend, to start ministering to street kids at night. They served meals and taught them to read and write in downtown Rizal Park, where the kids liked to hang out.

After two years, they noticed that stomachs were full, but lives were still empty. The kids they served were still robbing people. They were still sniffing Rugby glue—the drug of choice for street kids looking to forget the hunger and loneliness of street life for a while.

Gwen, 51, remembers one boy asking her, “If God really loves me, why wouldn’t he want me to steal my food?”

Nehemiah came to Living Stones as a 4-month-old. Now 6 years old, the cerebral palsy victim is still looking for a home to care for his special needs full-time.

Something more needed to be done.

“I talked to Gwen and said, ‘What are we doing here?’” says Dan, 51, who helped found Living Stones and volunteers there every weekday morning. “I said, ‘You’ve been doing feeding for about two years, but they’re still there. They’re still drug couriers; they’re still purse-snatchers. We’ve been making life a little bit better for them, but they’re still the same.”

Peter, Gwen and Dan agreed: The kids needed a real home where they could get off the street, off drugs, into school and into a new life. With no extra money to start an orphanage, the Bollants made plans to take in two or three kids at first and raise the funds to expand later.

In 1998 they handed off the feeding/schooling ministry to a Free Methodist mission, the same denomination that Dan serves with. Then they began researching how to begin a licensed children’s home and received their license in October 1999. With a grant from Rotary Club and the Canadian International Development Agency, they started the home and took in their first kids in January 2000.

As the Bollants got ready to open Living Stones, word got around Rizal Park. Opening morning, they found several kids camping in front of the house. The orphanage took in a few of the kids, then a few more. Some came for clothes and a few meals, then ditched—too many rules. Gwen says most street kids, then and now, have to be coaxed even to bathe and brush their teeth at first.

But five of the original boys stayed. Because they began school so late, some of them were 16 when they graduated from 6th grade. All five now attend high school. One of them, Jun, wants to be an engineer. Another, Josh, wants to be a pastor. Justony wants to be a pilot.

In the meantime, Living Stones began taking in babies – dozens of them. That wasn’t the original plan. But since they were getting so many requests to take in babies, the orphanage’s leaders decided that’s where God was leading.

Today babies come to Living Stones from many sources: hospitals that deliver unwanted babies, priests who find abandoned babies in their churches. At least two children at Living Stones fathered illicitly by pastors who didn’t want the affair known.

“Each child has his own sad story to tell,” Dan says.

Clock is ticking

That story could get sadder. Today, 22 years into their ministry here, the Bollants are short-timers. The plan is to put in three more years and then head home to British Columbia to put their kids through college. That means Living Stones needs new management.

Feeling God’s leading (with some prodding from Gwen), the Philippines chapter of Hope for the Nations has decided to take over Living Stones. The two groups have gone so far as to merge their boards of directors. One problem: When the Peter and Gwen leave, their support goes with them. To replace that support, Hope for the Nations needs sponsors.

But rather than sponsors for individual children at Living Stones, who come in and are adopted out, the orphanage is looking for 60 sponsors at $35 USD per month. That will cover the gamut of expenses—staff, utilities, rent, clothes, food, medicines, etc.—that Living Stones incurs to care for the 20 or so children it has at any one time.

“Our major hope is with sponsorships,” says Patrick Elaschuk, executive director of Hope for the Nations in the Philippines. “Everyone is in agreement, but up to this point, we’ve raised nothing.”

So Elaschuk has put the merger on hold until December, hoping that the support picture will have improved by then. If not, Living Stones will cease to exist inside of three years.

“If one day, no one will support the orphanage, it is done,” Montenegro says. “It is dependent on voluntary support.”