Lustre News
The Lustre Christian High School Foundation’s annual 100 Club fund drive will be kicked off with a dinner at 6 p.m. (appetizers at 5:30) on Monday, Oct. 20, in the LCHS cafeteria. It is open to all LCHS supporters who give $100 or more to the foundation. RSVPs were sough by Oct. 15. The special speaker is Neil Zerbe, LCHS/LBA alum and retired U.S. Navy.
Roberto and Heather Atienza and their teens, May and Bastiaan, were welcomed home from the Philippines on Monday, Oct. 9, with a supper at the home of Bob and Gretchen Schiller. Roberto gave a presentation to those of the community gathered. He said there are three regions in the Philippines: Luzon, Visayas and Mindinau.”
The Children’s Shelter of Cebu is one of six places in the Philippines to be certified by The National Authority for Child Care as a “haven home”. They are the first to be certified in their region. It means someone can legally bring a child to them for care by their specially trained staff, no questions asked.
Hope House was finished this year and dedicated with celebration. They have 17 youth in senior high (grades 11-12), who are resident in Hope House, 10 of them in college, with the lower floor available as assisted living for disabled adults. Hope House has its own set of specially trained house parents and social worker. Each home has a husband and wife couple assigned to provide a family atmosphere to the children assigned to their care, with access to local doctors and medical care. Half of the residents at the shelter are now older, so the mission has developed programs to help them launch into the workplace.
They pump water up to the roof where the students keep a garden. The shelter has helped 1,000 kids since it was established in 1979. He asked prayer for those affected by the 6.9 earthquake at 10 p.m. Sept. 29, 50 miles off shore of Cebu. It made buildings topple in the northern part of Cebu.
Dawson Olfert, commander at the Lustre Awana program, opened the Awana Oct. 8, with a talk on “how to pray” based on John 17:2-3 and encouraged the students to “repeat back to God what is true, using Bible verses.” “They remind us of what He has done and what He will do.” He encouraged the adults present “to stop and watch the simple faith of a child”.
Olfert said to the two older groups, “it is a great honor to introduce someone who grew up in our community, who has moved to another country to do what God called them to do”. He then introduced Roberto and Heather Atienza of Cebu, Philippines, saying Heather grew up in Lustre, attending its schools and met her husband at college where she got her chemistry degree.
They married and Roberto became a pastor of a Filipino church for 17 years in Minneapolis. They moved their family of four to Cebu in 2017 to take the place of the retiring founder, who started the shelter in 1979, gathering children from the street to give them a home. The Atienzas will begin their seventh year as director of the Children’s Shelter of Cebu, with its school, infirmary and four homes with 68 residents. Roberto began his presentation with questions and pictures, age appropriate to the three groups.
He asked, “In what part of the world is the Philippines? What is their currency called and why, and what is it worth? To whom would you go for help to learn your Awana verses? Where would you go if you saw a storm coming? Where would you go if you wanted a snack?” He said “the children that were referred to the shelter would have had no answer to these questions.”
“The Philippines, in Southeast Asia, has 180 languages on the 7,000-plus islands that make up the nation. As a former colony of Spain, their money is in pesos, but 100 pesos equals $2 U.S., and 1,000 pesos is a 12-hour day’s wage of about $9 which on they need to feed an average family of seven. The landmass of all the islands, if smashed together would be smaller than Montana, and Cebu City’s landmass is less than the area of Lustre, but has a population of 3.16 million people. It is the second largest city in the Philippines, a country alongside Japan, with the most natural disasters (typhoons, earthquakes) in the world. About 35 million of the 110 million people in the Philippines are between the ages of 0 and 17, a quarter of them in extreme poverty. Nine million are under the age of 5 in the Philippines.
“But the mission does not believe poverty is a reason to separate family, so they try to find the families of the children found on the street before accepting them as residents when referred to them by government agencies, which determine the adoptions”. There are four homes with house parents who become a substitute family for these children.
“There are currently 19 children available for international adoption, between the ages of 2 and 15 because was no home found for them within the country”. He spoke about Ephesians 1:4-6 and how we “can be adopted by God as His children by believing on His Son and how He came to take our punishment.” He showed the students the Biblical instructions to care for widows and orphans in James 1:27, and said that was their family’s purpose in being in the Philippines.
He told two stories of how children were found, and rescued by the older youth who had grown up at the shelter, and that the kids were rescued from violence, crime, neglect because of drug abuse, and the school age children would need to catch up in school. He concluded by telling them about Filipino cuisine and showing a picture of one of May’s favorite snack foods, pig brain. It was fun to see our student’s faces!
