Saturday, May 8

Tonight we attended a foundation celebration for an incredible NGO here called Samaritana.  They are an outreach team that visits women in bars offering counseling, medical, and legal assistance to those who decide to leave the lifestyle of prostitution and pursue other forms of livelihood.  Samaritana provides several opportunities for livelihood, such as card making, jewlery making, etc., and helps to empower them as they begin to be able to offer outreach, leadership and mentoring to other women dealing with issues of prostitution. The name Samaritana comes from the story in the Bible where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well, and treats her with dignity, not an adultress.  I was able to meet several of the clients who had clearly been transformed through this organization.  It was such an honor.  I loved witnessing them feel beautiful (as they obviously did all dressed up in their gowns) and reveal their inner beauty to us as they shared their story.  Hopefully IJM will have some opportunities to partner with them over the next few months, as they will be an incredible resource. 


I was already on a little bit of emotional overload this week, though.  I think sometimes when your brain is continually fed with anything (for me currently...issues of sex trafficking) sometimes it just gets too overwhelming to handle and I found myself having to "check out" sometimes, otherwise I knew I would awkwardly start uncontrollably sobbing which I'm sure this foundation dinner wasn't the time or the place. The women were so bright and just seemed to shine as they spoke of how badly they wanted to help others from not making the mistakes they had made and of the hope they had found through their new spiritual journey. 

Manila Moment:  So our fabulous IJM driver was late picking us up from the event because he had been in a minor accident.  We were asking what people usually do when there is an accident here, as it does not seem like people typically call the police to come over, write a ticket, then call their insurance agency to deal with the finances.  Mike told us that the other day his taxi driver was talking about a time a jeepney had run into the taxi causing some damage.  The jeepney driver got out and said that he could either give the taxi driver some pesos, or the taxi driver could punch him in face as hard as he could....and the taxi driver chose to punch the jeepney driver in the face as hard as he could.  Aparently the taxi driver punched him so hard, he went flying onto the ground, and that was it.  That settled it. They called it even.