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Saving Moses
Changing lives, not just diapers
New Faith Family Children’s Home offers more than just a safe haven
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTO GALLERY
MANILA -- When an anonymous servant girl pulled baby Moses out of the Nile River 3,500 years ago, it changed history.
When an anonymous citizen pulled another baby Moses out of a gutter here on Jan. 29, it may not have changed history — but it changed a life. And that one life, like the lives of the other 24 children at New Faith Family Children’s Home, are worth saving to the people who run one of Manila’s newest orphanages.
Opened in February 2005, New Faith Family operates in Cuatro, a squatter village surrounded by the suburb of Antipolo. Moses was found at about 2 a.m. lying in a nearby concrete drainage gutter, emaciated and bitten by ants. His umbilical cord had just fallen off, making him less than two weeks old, according to New Faith Family social worker Serlyn Esquierdo.
The one bit of good news was that he was abandoned during dry season. Had he rolled into the gutter during the current monsoon rains, he would have drowned.
Moses’ trip from filth to New Faith Family took all of 36 hours. The person who found him called the barangay (local government) office. The barangay then referred him to the federal Department of Social Welfare and Development. The DSWD put him in a hospital, where he was fed and given medicine through an IV in his foot because his veins had collapsed.
By the evening of the next day, Jan. 30, DSWD had called New Faith Family and taken him there.
“He was in really poor condition,” says Esquierdo, 23, who became New Faith Family’s social worker in February 2005. “I was thankful that we had him, knowing his background.”
Today, Moses has the baby fat of a healthy little boy and a ready smile. Brought in weighing 1.8 kg (about 4 lbs.), he now weighs 6.5 kg (more than 14 lbs.). He has joined 24 other children ranging in age from 6 months to 13 years. Their home stands like a white cement block beacon in the middle of a squatter village where sewage runs down open gutters right past the front gate.
But inside, children play and watch movies in a clean, sunlit greatroom. In the yard they can run around in the shade of a tall mango tree or bounce on a trampoline. And they can eat together in a big room with a tiled floor with people who care whether they live or die.
Clearing up the past
Some of the kids come abused, some abandoned. Many have dental problems. Eight kids are being treated for tuberculosis. Habits they learned on the streets—angry outbursts, fighting, stealing—give the home’s eight staff members and numerous volunteers a lot of issues to work through.
“All of our kids have lots of baggage,” says Haley Shaw, 20, a volunteer from East Jordan, Mich. “Even after a year and a half we don’t know the extent. Now I can see when they have a problem, they’ll tell somebody about it instead of punching the other one in the face.”
New Faith Family exists to help work those changes into the kids’ hearts, says Director Jeff Long.
“We’re in a battle for kids’ lives,” says Long, 43. He doubles as personnel director just up the road at Faith Academy, the world’s largest missionary children’s school. “We don’t just want to impact them physically. Our goal is that they’ll be in the Kingdom someday. So it doesn’t matter if we feed them or get the lice out of their hair or the worms out of their bodies or the tuberculosis out of their system. All those things don’t matter if they don’t know Jesus.
“Every day I ask our volunteers to show up to change lives, not to change diapers,” he says. “If you’re here just to change diapers, stay home. We’re not interested in just providing a safe haven. We want to provide a new life.”
The home’s staff and volunteers do Bible lessons every morning and evening. They teach the kids songs. They teach them Bible verses. And they ask people to pray.
“We have literally dozens of people praying for us every day, and from that, I believe, God works in the lives of people to get involved,” Long says.
One of those people was Lesley Schmidt, a 47-year-old native Australian now living with her husband and daughter in Kansas. She learned of Moses through a mutual friend of hers and Long’s. As soon as she read Moses’ story in Long’s newsletter, she began praying for the little boy. She came to New Faith Family in early May to help for three weeks. She has remained here for three months, helping the staff and doting on Moses, whom she now wants to adopt.
“It’s been an absolute joy,” says Schmidt. “We’ve all had a really great time. We’ve all really grown together.” Schmidt says she has fallen in love with the kids at the home and the Philippines and would love to move there with her husband. However, she’s planning to go back to the U.S. in a month and wait for the Lord to work things out in His time, she says.
Improving hearts and minds
The children’s home isn’t just about working through kids’ past problems. They’re working to give them a future, too. To that end they’ve begun schooling their own kids plus 17 outside students from Cuatro.
Last school year the staff decided to send older kids to a local private school and keep some at home. The kids at home learned more, Shaw says. Also many of the kids at the home had never been to school before, so teaching them at home seemed the better option to acclimate them to structured learning.
The school employs three Filipino teachers and two assistants to teach 40 students in all. That is the same number of children the home itself could house eventually. But for now, Long wants to take things slowly and learn how to do things best.
“We’ve never run a children’s home before,” says the15-year veteran of the mission field. “So we figure about 25 kids is a good amount to learn with.”
Expansion in a rough place
Not that Long doesn’t want to take advantage of new ministry opportunities when they arise. Launching a second New Faith Family home on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao represents such an opportunity.
New Faith Family and its parent organization, First Love International Ministries, hope to begin an orphanage in the province of Bukidnon on Mindanao for 75 children as soon as funds become available. Civil and religious strife has rocked Mindanao in recent years. Bombings, such as the blast in the town of Shariff Aguad that killed five and injured 10 more in June, continue to plague the island. Numerous Muslim rebel groups continue to operate in Mindanao and other southern islands near Indonesia.
Long says the unrest has driven many children whose parents are victims of the violence to the streets. To help meet the need of those street children, the ministry hopes to purchase a compound with eight buildings in Bukidnon from another ministry.
Long believes First Love has the five necessary ingredients to get things cooking in Bukidnon:
“I believe God answers prayer,” Long says. “I makes no sense at all why people who have never met us would offer to give $1,000 or $5,000 or $10, but God puts it on people’s hearts through [our] communicating. This summer, just other people telling our story netted other people getting involved.
“Everything that we’re doing is being put into place so that these kids are cared for over the long term.”
By Called and Sent Staff PHOTO GALLERY
MANILA -- When an anonymous servant girl pulled baby Moses out of the Nile River 3,500 years ago, it changed history.
 |
|
Lesley Schmidt holds Moses, who is now 6 months old and more than triple the weight he was when he arrived at New Faith Family Children's Home on Jan. 30.
|
When an anonymous citizen pulled another baby Moses out of a gutter here on Jan. 29, it may not have changed history — but it changed a life. And that one life, like the lives of the other 24 children at New Faith Family Children’s Home, are worth saving to the people who run one of Manila’s newest orphanages.
Opened in February 2005, New Faith Family operates in Cuatro, a squatter village surrounded by the suburb of Antipolo. Moses was found at about 2 a.m. lying in a nearby concrete drainage gutter, emaciated and bitten by ants. His umbilical cord had just fallen off, making him less than two weeks old, according to New Faith Family social worker Serlyn Esquierdo.
The one bit of good news was that he was abandoned during dry season. Had he rolled into the gutter during the current monsoon rains, he would have drowned.
Moses’ trip from filth to New Faith Family took all of 36 hours. The person who found him called the barangay (local government) office. The barangay then referred him to the federal Department of Social Welfare and Development. The DSWD put him in a hospital, where he was fed and given medicine through an IV in his foot because his veins had collapsed.
By the evening of the next day, Jan. 30, DSWD had called New Faith Family and taken him there.
“He was in really poor condition,” says Esquierdo, 23, who became New Faith Family’s social worker in February 2005. “I was thankful that we had him, knowing his background.”
Today, Moses has the baby fat of a healthy little boy and a ready smile. Brought in weighing 1.8 kg (about 4 lbs.), he now weighs 6.5 kg (more than 14 lbs.). He has joined 24 other children ranging in age from 6 months to 13 years. Their home stands like a white cement block beacon in the middle of a squatter village where sewage runs down open gutters right past the front gate.
But inside, children play and watch movies in a clean, sunlit greatroom. In the yard they can run around in the shade of a tall mango tree or bounce on a trampoline. And they can eat together in a big room with a tiled floor with people who care whether they live or die.
Clearing up the past
Some of the kids come abused, some abandoned. Many have dental problems. Eight kids are being treated for tuberculosis. Habits they learned on the streets—angry outbursts, fighting, stealing—give the home’s eight staff members and numerous volunteers a lot of issues to work through.
“All of our kids have lots of baggage,” says Haley Shaw, 20, a volunteer from East Jordan, Mich. “Even after a year and a half we don’t know the extent. Now I can see when they have a problem, they’ll tell somebody about it instead of punching the other one in the face.”
New Faith Family exists to help work those changes into the kids’ hearts, says Director Jeff Long.
 |
| The view of Cuatro right outside New Faith Family's front gate. |
“Every day I ask our volunteers to show up to change lives, not to change diapers,” he says. “If you’re here just to change diapers, stay home. We’re not interested in just providing a safe haven. We want to provide a new life.”
The home’s staff and volunteers do Bible lessons every morning and evening. They teach the kids songs. They teach them Bible verses. And they ask people to pray.
“We have literally dozens of people praying for us every day, and from that, I believe, God works in the lives of people to get involved,” Long says.
One of those people was Lesley Schmidt, a 47-year-old native Australian now living with her husband and daughter in Kansas. She learned of Moses through a mutual friend of hers and Long’s. As soon as she read Moses’ story in Long’s newsletter, she began praying for the little boy. She came to New Faith Family in early May to help for three weeks. She has remained here for three months, helping the staff and doting on Moses, whom she now wants to adopt.
“It’s been an absolute joy,” says Schmidt. “We’ve all had a really great time. We’ve all really grown together.” Schmidt says she has fallen in love with the kids at the home and the Philippines and would love to move there with her husband. However, she’s planning to go back to the U.S. in a month and wait for the Lord to work things out in His time, she says.
Improving hearts and minds
The children’s home isn’t just about working through kids’ past problems. They’re working to give them a future, too. To that end they’ve begun schooling their own kids plus 17 outside students from Cuatro.
Last school year the staff decided to send older kids to a local private school and keep some at home. The kids at home learned more, Shaw says. Also many of the kids at the home had never been to school before, so teaching them at home seemed the better option to acclimate them to structured learning.
The school employs three Filipino teachers and two assistants to teach 40 students in all. That is the same number of children the home itself could house eventually. But for now, Long wants to take things slowly and learn how to do things best.
“We’ve never run a children’s home before,” says the15-year veteran of the mission field. “So we figure about 25 kids is a good amount to learn with.”
Expansion in a rough place
 |
| Mindanao, Philippines |
Not that Long doesn’t want to take advantage of new ministry opportunities when they arise. Launching a second New Faith Family home on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao represents such an opportunity.
New Faith Family and its parent organization, First Love International Ministries, hope to begin an orphanage in the province of Bukidnon on Mindanao for 75 children as soon as funds become available. Civil and religious strife has rocked Mindanao in recent years. Bombings, such as the blast in the town of Shariff Aguad that killed five and injured 10 more in June, continue to plague the island. Numerous Muslim rebel groups continue to operate in Mindanao and other southern islands near Indonesia.
Long says the unrest has driven many children whose parents are victims of the violence to the streets. To help meet the need of those street children, the ministry hopes to purchase a compound with eight buildings in Bukidnon from another ministry.
Long believes First Love has the five necessary ingredients to get things cooking in Bukidnon:
- Filipino staff;
- people praying;
- missionaries to help start it (in this case, two from the U.S. and one from Australia);
- Outside monthly support for all 75 kids, courtesy of a foundation in Kansas City;
- and a place to house them.
“I believe God answers prayer,” Long says. “I makes no sense at all why people who have never met us would offer to give $1,000 or $5,000 or $10, but God puts it on people’s hearts through [our] communicating. This summer, just other people telling our story netted other people getting involved.
“Everything that we’re doing is being put into place so that these kids are cared for over the long term.”
© 2006 Called and Sent Magazine. All Rights Reserved.