Since we fly on Steve’s space-available passes, it took several days to get there as most of the flights we needed were full, so, by the time we got there, we were exhausted. After landing in Manila, we needed to go to a hotel for the night before catching our flight to Davao early the next morning. In the taxi, on our way to the hotel, we stopped at a street light. While stopped, one of the street kids (children who live on the streets, sleep on the sidewalks and survive by begging and rummaging through garbage) came to our taxi begging (they always target the ‘rich’ Americans – to them, even some of our poorest, who live in housing projects with food stamps and health care are rich – it just depends on your perspective). Being an air-conditioned cab, the window handles had been removed from the backseat, so I couldn’t reach him, no matter how badly I wanted to – it left me in tears because I remembered one of the many reasons I hate coming to this country – all of the horrendous situations that I can’t do anything about.

 

While we were there, I went back and visited the orphanage that Allie came from. The lady who had been running it before was gone, but the man who is in charge now remembered me and invited me to his office to visit. As we visited and discussed the children, along with the circumstances in this country, I came to realize nothing had changed and the need for help is still there. As we visited, he shared stories with me of more of the children – in particular, the story of one little girl who is Allie’s age – she lives at the orphanage and he wanted me to know what a miracle it is that she can walk – he introduced me to her and I found she was a beautiful little girl who has extremely deformed legs. My daughter-in-law said they call them ‘frog children’. Again, I left in tears – this deformity is caused by rickets (a disease caused by malnutrition). One of the many problems Allie had when I took her to see the pediatrician at two months of age was rickets – in fact, hers was so bad – if you weren’t aware of what the problem was – you would think she had two ‘club’ feet. Today, Allie has overcome all of her original problems, except some paralysis to her face which we are still working on – so, as I looked at this little girl at the orphanage – I couldn’t help but think, “Except for the grace of God, there goes Allie”. 

 

When I first decided to take Allie home – someone said to me, “Why would you want to saddle yourself with a child who has inferior DNA?” At the time, I remember thinking, “Can you really be that prejudiced?” Now that I have had Allie for 4 ½ years, I can report that she is beautiful, intelligent and a constant joy to be with. People often comment on how happy she always is – maybe it’s because a part of her realizes how precious life is –or maybe it’s just her nature – whatever the case is, I am the lucky one – I am extremely thankful to have her as part of my life and my family.

 

Later, when I returned to the orphanage to talk to the manager about the specific paperwork and money it would take to open an orphanage, he explained to me that he would be happy to walk me through the whole process and assist me in getting all of the paperwork turned in to the right organizations – he said once I submit the papers for our foundation, I will need to have a bank account with 1,000,000 pesos in it to show that I can support the orphanage. This is somewhere between $20,000 to $25,000, depending on what the exchange rate is. When he introduced me to his case-worker, he said I was being called of God to open an orphanage. When I looked at him questioningly, he smiled and said, “Do you know how I know you are called? Because if you weren’t – why in the whole wide world would you consider coming to this place?” He had a point – this is not some place I would choose to live on purpose.

 

We arrived back home the day before my birthday on July 23^rd. The next week would prove to be a pivotal point in my life. Two different series of events began to unfold simultaneously: The first series of events was petty and probably not worth mentioning, but it proved to be frustrating and irritating to me. It went something like this: I only have (had) a few pieces of jewelry that are ‘real’, meaning gold with real stones – I had taken them with me and somewhere in our travels they were stolen, along with my favorite sunglasses that I have had for several years. When I got home, I realized that I had gone way over budget in trying to help my son and his family, so I would need to give up a small office space I had (which I loved) in order to balance out again. On my birthday, we went to a parade and spent some time with our family (July 24^th is a holiday in Utah because it is the day the pioneers first arrived here). We got home around 10:00 at night and the next morning discovered our car had been stolen. The following day as I was coming down the stairs, in the dark, I thought I was at the bottom when I wasn’t – tripped on the bottom stair and broke my toe. When we first arrived home, I found that my daughters had kept my garden watered, but not weeded, so I was getting up with the sun and spending 5 – 6 hours every morning in the garden making my way through the forest of weeds. Several days after returning home, there came a knock at the door from one of our neighbors telling us they were extremely sorry, but their cow had gotten into my garden and eaten the rows I had just spent all of those hours weeding. By the end of the week, I will admit, I was beginning to wonder what in the world was going on – I had lost my jewelry, my sunglasses, my car, my office, my garden and broken my toe. It was one of those weeks where you just want to yell out at the universe, “Are you kidding me?”

 

The second series of events was much more meaningful: As we arrived back home, it was obvious to me that I needed to knuckle down and get busy with some seminars. Since the first of the year, we have been running a kind of ‘test’ group through the Dr Mom’s Health Club so we could work the kinks out of it and have something positive to offer in order to help others learn about herbs and how to take greater responsibility for their own health. My plan had been to get out and start promoting it when we returned from the Philippines. The problem was – I could not get those children out of my mind or the need that I have known about now for four and a half years – its one thing to live in blissful ignorance, but it’s another thing to have knowledge and not be willing to do anything about it. 

 

Shortly after arriving home, I received a message from Nathan telling me about a baby that had been born on June 18^th and abandoned. The mother was a relative of my daughter-in-laws. They had just found out that this woman who was homeless and living on the streets had been pregnant, but didn’t want anyone to know, so she had tried a self-induced abortion which failed, but apparently had caused some damage to the baby. When the baby was born, she was deformed, so the mother abandoned her with a friend of the family’s who had agreed to feed her for a short time, but she would not and could not keep her. The woman the baby was staying with lives in a ghetto, without running water, which was created to help the homeless. She also has TB. My son has two small daughters of his own plus two nieces of his wife who are living with them – he did not feel they could take on a new baby. 

 

As I spent all of those hours in the garden, sitting in the dirt, weeding, I had a lot of time for some deep soul-searching and meditation. For personal reasons, there is no need to go into all of my thoughts, but it is sufficient to say here that I felt I had come to another ‘fork in the road’. As I looked down one path – I saw myself quite contentedly staying on my little 2 acres with my raccoons, goats, chickens, garden, etc., building a business, getting out of debt, having a place where my children and grandchildren could come to grandma’s house – in other words, living out my life in semi-peace taking care of my homestead and my family. 

 

As I looked down the other path, I saw one insurmountable challenge after another, along with conflict and objections from every side. But, when I pondered on people whom I have admired in my life, such as Ghandi, Mother Theresa, Ann Wigmore, Dr. Christopher and others, I realized that in order to accomplish the incredible things they accomplished they were willing to face insurmountable odds and they were willing to sacrifice their own comforts and security to spend their lives in service to others – to make a difference. I am certainly not in any way comparing myself to these people - I am merely helping you to understand some of the thoughts which were going through my mind as I tried to determine what I should do.

 

I was committed to speak at the centennial celebration of Dr. Christopher’s 100^th birthday on August 1^st in Salt Lake City and then to do my day of teaching at the Master Herbalist Seminar on August 5^th, so there was nothing I could do before then. By the time we were supposed to be going to the centennial celebration I was feeling pretty beat up, frustrated and confused. As the week drew to a close, one of my daughters said to me, “You know, Mom, instead of looking at everything that has happened as loss, maybe you should look at it as life’s way of rearranging things so you are freed up to do what is more important – to let go of what holds you here”. (Out of the mouths of babes)   

On Friday, July 31^st, just before we left to go to Salt Lake City for the centennial celebration, my son sent me some pictures of the baby which had been abandoned. He had found out where she was staying and had gone to check on her circumstances – they weren’t good. He sent these pictures saying she had some type of tumor or growth at the base of her spine.