Day 2 – St. Martin de Porres Orphanage

Today our team drove 1.5 hours to Butos Bulakan to visit the St. Martin de Porres Orphanage

DSC01466
ANCOP is one of the orphanage’s charity partners.

We entered the beautiful dining hall for a brief orientation.

DSC01472
Natural elements such as stone and wood were architecturally highlighted.
DSC01475
Everything in the room was both architecturally strong and beautiful.

The St. Martin de Porres Orphanage moved to its current location in  2005 onto donated land 7 hectares in size.

DSC01484
Ate Jinky gave us a brief history of the orphanage.
DSC01491
Local kids getting a sneak peak.

There are currently 127 kids at the orphanage mostly from ages 6-12 years old.

DSC01496
The orphanage 1st opened in its original location in 2003. 3 original kids now college students gave us presentation.

In the morning, we had a tour of the beautiful grounds.

DSC01505
Outside view of one of the resident houses. Children of similar ages and gender reside in the same house.
DSC01515
View of another residence from the 2nd floor window of another house.
DSC01531
Each house had a water pump for bathing and washing.
DSC01535
Curious on-lookers.
DSC01543
Posing for the camera.
DSC01565
Unlike most of the others, Kevin was able to speak Tagalog to the children.
DSC01570
Each child is responsible to do a list of chores (like setting the table for her residence).
DSC01583
When I say, “God is good” you say “All the time.”
DSC01589
We all gathered for prayer in the beautiful chapel.
DSC01593
Inside of the chapel was beautiful.
DSC01607
And so was the outside.

The orphanage also had guest quarters for special guests and sponsors.

DSC01609
Guest quarters bedroom.
DSC01610
A quiet place to pray.
DSC01638
Being the change!!
DSC01645
Awwww… newborn puppies!
DSC01648
Can we take him home please?!
DSC01653
What are these Canadians doing out there?
DSC01660
Wow… Lunch was delicious!!

In the afternoon we got to play with the kids… our favourite part of the day.

DSC01665
We played stella-ela-ola while we waited for the performers to get ready.
DSC01695
We were treated to some beautiful music.
DSC01707
Chillin’ with new friends.
DSC01725
“What’s going on that side of the circle?”
DSC01740
Duck duck goose was a hit (and easy to explain)!
DSC01751
And so was the game “Pass the Squeeze”.
DSC01752
I’m ready for the pass Krystal!

The student leaders gave out some of the gifts that they prepared from the night before.

DSC01755
Hmmm… I wonder which gift I’ll pick!
DSC01756
Spreading some Christmas love.
DSC01760
“Hi, my name is Meredith :)”
DSC01763
Even in the Philippines, the kids know how to dance Gangnam Style!
DSC01772
Our new friends.
DSC01775
It was hard to say bye… we didn’t want to leave but we had a mass to catch.

After the orphanage, we traveled back to the hotel to freshen up before heading to mass for 6:00 pm.

DSC01777
Everyone is their lovely church outfits.
DSC01781
We attended an English mass at Tri-Noma.

The mass celebrated the Feast of Holy Family.

DSC01784

Tomorrow we get a day off as we visit one of the most beautiful places in the Philippines… Tagaytay!!

2 thoughts on “Day 2 – St. Martin de Porres Orphanage”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

w
Cancel

Connecting to %s