As a prerequisite for the JOC to the Philippines, in March 2019, Sue Walker, Chacha Del Corro, Duy Phan, Cody Phan, Michelle Fung and myself embarked on a visit to Eastern Samar.
This trip over four days was initially to establish new areas to complete our goals for next year, however after discussion with one of our support Pastors we agreed to take in sixty [60] water filters for distribution to schools in the Oras area.
Cody (age 6!) was a great helper.
This was to be a big task considering the length of time, however we new that we would be able to complete it.
After arriving we assembled the 120 buckets ready for distribution with Duy, Cody and Michelle doing most of the works. These three-amazing people of which Cody is six years old, raised a considerable amount of money for water filters so that INA could distribute them. They wanted to see what we did and how we did it.
We were then able to travel up a river two hours and distribute filters to a number of schools that had no road access.
A river boat took us two hours up river, where there were no roads.
Also on this trip we were able to revisit the ‘relocation area, high school and junior school where we had provided filters earlier in the year and were very pleased so see that all were working well. At the high school we met the security man who stayed overnight at the school to protect it and his job was to filter all the required water for the next day and place it in the classrooms.
We met with the Mayor of Oras and she is very supportive of what we are doing.
One young man we met at dinner told us he spent 60 pesos a day buying water for his extended family so we were able to bless him and provide him a filter. Thank you, Jesus!
~ Geoff Walker
