Hello all. We hope everyone is well.
The trip to Manila Philippians has been finalized. We will leave November 30th and return December 15th. Which means I will be taking Melissa to the Philippians for her birthday (December 6th). Aren’t I such a good husband. lol This will be the first overseas mission trip Melissa and I have gotten to go on together since Roatan Honduras in 2019. We are very excited about this and are looking forward to serving together in this capacity.
I will be leading the team of 5-6 people to the Access Center for Youth & Children in Manila, run by our friends and fellow CCLburg missionaries Jaydon and Maddie Mook, where we will be helping to train the staff in trauma care, communication, leadership, budgeting and building maintenance among other skills. We will also be helping to encourage the staff with devotionals, feedback and just coming along beside them. Below is a copy of a message from Maddie about opening day for the Access Center in April 2024.
“Opening day at the center was amazing. Kids were telling us it was the happiest day of their life. We kept telling them it’s not just today, it’s every week and they’re so shocked. Kids never had seen a library before and amazed when they opened a kids book. They just kept looking at the books with wide eyes and kept coming up to us saying “Ate (Mrs.) Maddie, Ate maddie – I can feel the cat hair in the book!!!” (The touch and feel books). Bounce house is only for really rich people, none of these kids had ever been on anything like it. Kids saw it from a distance and screamed as they ran inside of it. Kids saying they’d never been in a place this nice before. Free snacks? Free water? Free juice? Really they were asking?? Our neighbors telling us how happy they were that they can come and be apart of this. Seeing these kids, come and get to be kids. The stress and weight of life was taken off their shoulders for a few hours. It’s a joy that I can’t even explain. One girl, who’s been with us since the beginning and she’s 10. I’ve never seen her smile, and today, she smiled. I’m crying as I write this because I could just go on and on. It was chaotic and insane but man is it worth it. God is so good. God is so faithful. What had been a dream for so many years… happened today. God is so good. We had around 70ish kids in total.“
We also hope to give the children training in various skills. We will help with the center’s Christmas bash for the children and their families and hand out the backpacks full of clothes, shoes, school supplies and toys sent out from Calvary Chapel Lynchburg this past June.
Melissa and I still need about $2600 to go on this trip. As always, we are asking for your prayers in this endeavor. If you feel led to help financially, we now have ways of donating on our website. Go to https://buchanansinthewild.com/give/
We would also like you to pray for Jaydon and Maddie Mook who are serving full time in Manila and, along with the rest of their team, are truly blessing these children. You can see how God is using them and help support them financially at https://accesscenter.net/
Much Love and may God bless you.
Derek and Melissa
Buchanans In The Wild
No responses yet