Ministry in Tacloban

The Provincial Jail in Tacloban 1984

James and I would go to the provincial jail in Tacloban to teach the inmates. The inner square was dirt and open, the walls were lined with concrete rooms. Each room had wooden beds three to four high on three walls. The other wall had the opening for an entry which was chiseled out concrete as though it was once a solid wall. The walls were high enough as to be confining and had a type of barbed wire looping along the top like a loose slinky. There was possibly two hundred men in the facility.

At the far end of the courtyard was a latrine and a single faucet. I remember a very skinny man dying of tuberculosis who squatted alone near the latrine waiting to die. Neither James or I had the resources to help all of these men. We did teach them and pray with them. I still have a ship in a bottle made by one of the prisoners. He presented it to me and had placed my name inside. I gave him what I had in my pocket which converted to about two dollars.

Many of the jails in the Philippines are much more humane and the prisoners eat well. There are still exceptions in the larger cities where overcrowding exists.

LWCC Offices

I opened up a little office for our ministry, it was across the street from Divine Word University. World Vision supplied us with guitars and mandolins and Mercia (a graduate of Immanuel Bible College in Cebu) ran the program for teaching music to the kids. World Vision also supplied us with backpacks, notebooks, pencils and other items to give to the poorer kids at the beginning of the school year. Because we held evangelistic meetings in the poorest barangays our LWCC services had a lot of needy kids. Next to the LWCC office was a teen ministry ran by JoJo. We were like a small ministry family doing our best. I taught a Wednesday evening Bible Study each week for college age people.

Trinidad’s Ministry

Trinidad was always on the go. She had her own calling to gather the poorest women in the poorest areas around the city and teach the all she had learned. She always brought plenty of hot bread and taught and prayed with them for hours. She asked me to come say hello to the women all meeting in a house in Siren. When I arrived more women came into the twenty foot square room and soon the posts were swaying with the weight. Trinidad’s American husband attracted too much attention!

One of the women in Siren was a grandmother. Her little house sat on stilts over black waste water. Her granddaughter was a mestiza, her name was Gene. Gene’s grandmother had been spiritually enriched by Trinidad’s ministry and began putting money in the LWCC offering. I would always give her back more than she gave by way of visiting her house and bringing food and other gifts. The mother of Gene lived in Angeles City and worked in the bars. She eventually married a G.I. of African heritage. He adopted Gene and brought her to live with her new family in California.