Today is the second full day at camp. The discomfort is real. When we were at our site, the Pastor said the camp was going to be at a beach with nice facilities. Instead, the camp is in the mountains with dirty toilets, flies, no beds, mosquitoes at night, and rain that pours non-stop. At first, I was really disappointed because of what I was expecting. Then I saw the smiles and awestruck eyes of the guys when they walked into camp for the first time. They went straight for the real basketball court and started a game right away. This was probably one of the only times they had been outside of the Onesimo house. So for them, they couldn’t have cared less about the camp’s condition. They were just happy to be out of the slums.
I’m also really sick. I have a cough that hasn’t gone away for a week. There’s no medicine, and the schedule is packed that it’s hard to get better. It seems impossible with the conditions now and when we get back to our sites. This is when praying for healing gets real. Jesus’ healing power is literally the only thing that can heal me, it’s the only thing that I can rely on. It just makes me think if I lived in the slums, if I got sick, I would have to buy medicine; most likely this would mean making more money to buy the medicine, but if I was sick, I probably couldn’t work. It’s a vicious cycle. When Kuya Jeff needed neosporine, we went to the closest place but it was too expensive for our budget. If it’s too expensive for us, it’s definitely too expensive for someone living in the slums.
It’s not only me, our whole team seems to have come down with a cough or something related. Figures the one time we all see each other, we all get sick…and in the worst conditions. But I think this is when God shows up in the most amazing ways. we can either cave into the sickness and let it dictate how we go about the rest of camp, or we can pray hard and ask God for an increase in faith that He is powerful and willing to heal us. We’ve seen God heal prior sickness before on this trip. In fact, he’s healed the next day after the sickness breaks out. Kuya got an allergic reaction from dinner, went to bed with red bumps all over his body. We prayed over him and the next morning, he was all better. The god we serve has healed all throughout time. His power to heal is unquestionable and in a desperate time like now where nothing seems to heal us, we need to go to the one true healer - Jesus.
- Jordan Kwong
