Virlanie

We have been talking about serving a mission for years.  From the very beginning, I told David that my dream mission would be as a service missionary to go to an orphanage and hold babies. When I was in Church on Sunday, they announced that the Relief Society was going to be going to Verlanie today, and invited all to come. Virlanie is a foundation started by a French man to take care of street children in Manila. They have several homes with houseparents, and take children from birth on up. These are children who have families who can't care for them, or who were born to other street children, or who have been abandoned and/or neglected, or abused. Verlanie takes them all.

So today, my very long-held dream was realized, and I got to go to an orphanage and hold babies! Actually, I only held one little boy, Angeles, who was about 18 months old.  We danced and sang and just cuddled. There were about ten young children in the room, from 3 months up to almost three.  The others, three and four, were downstairs with the other women who came.  We didn't get to stay but 30 minutes there, because then we went to see the developmentally disabled teens in another house. There we also did lots of hugs, and sang songs with them, and lots of high-fives. Again, only thirty minutes.  Jamie Bohn, our bishop's wife, has been going there for about a year and singing with the kids.  She is moving in June, and is hoping someone else will take over for her.

I asked our RS president, Micah, why we didn't just take it on as a RS project.  She said she had thought about that, but that there were so many worthy organizations that needed help, she had thought to visit each so that the individual sisters could find the ones that speak to them. As we were going home, I learned of two more such places.  One is the Holy Family school, that takes young girls from age 6 on up, who have been rescued from the most unimaginable circumstances, including trafficking.  This one is run by Catholic nuns Jamie calls "angels from Heaven." Last fall Jamie and another sister from our ward went to this school and organized a choir for Christmas.  The other sister, Carey Baldwin, asked friends and relatives in the States to sponsor choir girls, and got them all red dresses and matching shoes for the concert. They put on one concert for the workers at the school and various friends at Jamie's house, and from that, five more concerts were scheduled.  Then Jamie learned of the plight of women in the Women's Correctional Institution in Mandaluyong, the city where we live. All of you Americans sit up and take notice, and thank the Lord for the Bill of Rights!! These women are imprisoned upon arrest, and stay here until charges are filed and a trial can be held.  One woman, a friend of a member of our ward, was arrested because her boyfriend was caught in possession of drugs, so she was guilty by association.  She was taken from her two young children and put into prison for two years before her friends could finally get her out.  Other women are there eight, nine years--remember, no charges have even been filed! And, they have water and basic food.  No shampoo, soap, toothpaste, nothing unless someone donates it directly to them (bypassing jailers who might help themselves).  I surely did not realize that this kind of prison situation existed in 2014. Jamie and Carey decided to take their choir to the prison, and were able to make it through all the red tape by January 5 (for a Christmas concert.) She said these women were the most appreciative audience, and wanted to not only listen to the girls, but to visit with them.  Later the individual prisoners shared their singing, and the last was a woman who sang a song written by a prisoner, a Christmas song, but one that sang of their sorrows and troubles.  The little girls in the choir were crying by the end of that, which is understandable when you understand the trials they themselves had been through.

Our first calling here is to serve the Manila Mission and to help the 225-ish young missionaries. And when you really think about it, Jesus Christ is the only one who can solve the problems of this country. But, I hope that somehow we can find a way to serve in some of these other capacities.