Compassion Updates

Compassion 4 Kids International, Inc

Street kids swimming and taking a bath.

Thank you for visiting this page. The last two updates will be found below. For previous updates and the history of Compassion 4 Kids International, Inc. and the forming of Cikal Hope for Children, go to our History page.

February 2007:  Traveling to Singapore and then to Medan through Batam, was only highlighted with the time it takes to travel with one large suit case, a large box, and 2 small rolling bags through all the terminals. Batam has a custom's agent that takes his time so that those in the back room have plenty of time to go through your luggage. But it was painless and only had to pay out 25,000 rupiah.

Then  off to airport which is about a 15 minute drive. Getting the flight ticket is fun and soon I was on my way to Medan. Once landing there it was a short trip to the Pardede Hotel for a good night's sleep before traveling on to the final destination. First things first, I get a hot shower for the first time in about 50 hours and the last one until I begin my return trip. Then a short nap, a little walk, find a place to eat, and then off to dream land.

Sunday, after everyone gets out of church, Cici picks me up and off to her house to wait for Angela to come and pick me up.   By 2:30 we are at Angela's house and a greeting of smiles and hugs from the Tobings, parents of Angela.

The rest of the day was relaxing, talking, and checking out what will become the Cikal House for children. The first couple of days I spend doing a lot of measuring to get acquainted with  there sizes for windows, doors, height of windows, types of material, door heights, and so on with their metric measurements.

While Joe was doing this, in that big box Joe brought he was able to get 3 and 4 Muslim ladies to do all the cutting out of a full set of Betty Lukins flannel graph story cut-outs. It took them 4 days to do the cutting and my separation of all their cut-outs to the appropriate storage sheets they were put on. Now Angela has the story telling media for children's church at her church and all the children that we will have come through the Cikal Home.

Then the Chinese New Year celebration with kids out of school, came and Angela and Joe  took a 9 hour trip to Taratung, a large village in a beautiful valley to the east of Medan. The whole valley is almost 100% Christian oriented, compared to the 80% Muslim population in Medan. We got there late at night and the next morning went for a walk.

Behind Angela's uncle's property is an army base. As they were walking along the road, some of the enlisted men began to yell at them and Angela said they wanted us to come on base and talk to them. So they went up to their guard post and asked permission to enter. The sergeant made a call and in they walked.  We met them at the bridge over the river that had separated us. After a half hour of them learning about US service men and us learning about them, we found out that they had to pay a fee to get into the army.

Their pay is also very low, around $30 per month when they start. At least once a year they spend 2 months living in and off the jungles food entries. Then they invited me to their chow hall where we played a different type of dominoes. After playing a number of games it was time to go back to the house and eat.

After they ate, they went to a shrine where either Martin Luther or one of his missionaries had visited the area and a shrine was built. It had a wonderful view of the valley and was said the person prayed over the valley to become Christian, and it did. It is still more than 95% Christian.

The next morning all got in the car and went about a mile from their house to visit and take a hot shower. They had a couple of 2" conduits coming off the very high hill, behind this bathing area. The walls were about 7 foot high, enough room for 3 adults to sit in each area to take their bath. There were no doors and no roof. There were no water faucets and a 1.5 inch short conduit coming out of the wall, pouring water down in two places in each room. That felt so good.

The temperature was probably in the 60s  in this hilly area, quite different than the muggy 90s in the Stabat area. Then off to the house they go again and spend a little time with her aunt and uncle. Then down to the bus stop and they took a bus to Parapet. Parapet is a large village or a town that is next to Lake Toba. Lake Toba is the largest lake formed by a collapsing volcano and has an island in the middle of it with a short mountain.

They do limited walking as Joe's knee was bothering him a little .... darn Arthur. You know Arthur-i-tis.  Then with a couple of rain squalls that rain down buckets of rain limited the walking also. Being it rained so much the 2nd day there I decided not to go to the island.

After 2 nights there they get into a car and back to the Tobings they go.  On Thursday evening before Joe was to leave, Angela's uncle, and engineer, came by to talk to him about the building they may want to build. Joe got some answers from him but after returning home, it was not enough.

He spent many hours after returning home working on a building that would envelope the Cikal House in stages so that when children arrived, they would always have a place for them to sleep. It was to be a 2-story concrete building. Way into the summer and fall I worked out the sequence of stages on the computer so you could see how it would go together. This completed in late October, now prepared for showing them, Joe would return in February 2008, how it possibly will be done. Those words were made famous by some one, Joe thinks. But as per usual, you will see how things change later.

February 2008: The trip started out on the wrong side of fate. As soon as Joe got on the concourse at the airport, he found out his flight to San Francisco was postponed by 50 minutes. Well that is not too bad as he had 1 hr and 50 minutes to get across to the international concourse.

Then he got to the service counter to ask about the "what ifs" it had changed to 2.5 hours. Now it was serious and he asked about a flight to L.A. or Seattle, both of which have connecting flights to Tokyo or Hong Kong and then flights to Singapore. No way .... they were full. She did say  that it is better for him to get to San Francisco so that this leg was completed and easier to get on the flight to Tokyo, and they would put me up overnight.

Well, we ended up being 5 hours late taking off, all because San Francisco was socked in with thick fog and rain for the whole area. Once Joe got there, then off to customer service he went. He batted his eye brows, made the saddest, tired face he could make and said to the lady, "This delay will make my 30 hour trip into a 54 hour trip and the lady in Denver said I would be put up over night." With a tear running down his cheek, she excused herself to speak with a supervisor. ....... Darn I hate to tell lies ....... There were no batting of eye brows or tears .... his face was not very happy looking though and tried his darndest to not raise his voice.

Well the Lord likes that  way of talking, he thinks. She was gone about 10 minutes, and while her fingers did the walking on the computer keyboard she said they would pay for his hotel room and the evening meal and the breakfast. Wow, they did it, and so off he went to get the shuttle bus. It was still raining in San Francisco.

Sometimes he has to laugh at he thought of how things go wrong as the Lord prepares the way to make them go right. So after staying the night there, he boarded the 1 pm flight and off to Tokyo and then onto Singapore. We always get there about midnight and the inn at the airport was full. So he found a fairly soft cushioned chair and slept for at least 2 hours, adding to the 6 hours sleep on the planes. At 7:00 am he was at the Silk Air ticket counter and she said, "Oh, oh." That didn't sound good. "Your ticket is for yesterday and the flight is full today. Sorry, you need to go to the main customer service counter. Well, Silk Air was closed so went to the Singapore Air counter as they are the parent company.

They told him they could not do anything, it is Sunday and the Silk Air was closed until Monday. So Joe went to the United counter when they opened at 8 am. Thank goodness the Lord allows you to find people that really help when help is needed. She listened to my story, checked out the flight itinerary and said she had to do some face to face talking to two different airlines to make it work. She took my 2 large suit cases (on wheels) and my two small suit cases and put them inside her office as we went our way. Joe took his valuables with me.

Joe was to return in about an hour, so he went and ate breakfast. He returned to find she had made flight plans to Kuala Lampur on Silk Airlines and from there to Medan on Malaysian Airlines. The plane was to leave in less than an hour. Off to the races he went as he had to go to the main ticket counter to get the boarding pass and drop off his 2 large suitcases. He got to the waiting area when they began to board. Off to Kuala Lampur they went and then a quick stop for getting the next boarding pass and 35 minutes to get to the plane and board which was a train ride away (same airport).

Well it was about a 54 hour trip to Medan, off to the Pardede hotel to shower, sleep and eat and then sleep.Joe slept about 11 hours. Then off to Stabat and just relaxed the first day again. Then another 11 hours of sleep. Now it was time to go over the plans with how my drawings were going to work out. First they were going to add an inside toilet and bathing area in the end of what was a large room used for food prep and eating. Well it was large for the building it was in. 

On Tuesday they take a trip into Medan to talk to Angela's uncle Victor about the drawing. He informed Joe that it would cost about $200,000 to build what he had drawn. That was too much for what it was to be used for so now he had to come up with a new idea. Back to Stabat they went. By Tuesday night Joe had not gotten with Mr. Tobing to go over what we were to do. When he woke up Wednesday morning his leg hurt so much he could not walk, hardly at all. Thursday was a little better and was unable to get to the Cikal House to explain what needed to be done for the new toilet.

On Friday, about 2 pm Angela got a call saying there was a lady with 2 girls she wanted them to take in. So an appointment was made for Saturday to talk with her. When she came she asked for Cikal to take all four kids. They were being taken care of by a grandmother. The 14 year old had to cook for her 3 siblings. She only had rice to cook with no vegetables or meat of any kind. The diet would have devastating effect on them if continued.  And the grandmother was beginning to use kitchen utensils to hit the 14 year old for discipline. Joe said he really did not want to take in boys and girls as we only had one bedroom. So the lady was told that they would think about it and meet again on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon came and after thinking about it and Joe talked to Angela, he suggested they take them all. This is because their culture is different than ours, boys and girls under the age of 10 and 11, run around the house naked at times and even outside after a bath, as their clothes were being washed as many only had one set of play clothes. So when she came Joe informed her that it would be okay for all 4 children to come, aged 6 to 14. At the moment we only had one bunk bed and one bedroom for them to sleep. That now changes all the remodel plans Joe had prepared.

The children were to come on Monday to see if they would like the house and the surrounding area as well as liking Angela and Mrs. Tobing, Hannah.  Joe immediately sketched out a new hand drawing of the house and decided that they would raise the back wall of the back patio and raise the roof over the old kitchen/eating area to go over the new back room. As you leave the kitchen area to this room, we would add the new indoor toilet and a shower area to the right where the old patio was.

That would close up the old small door to the east and we would put in a new locking door on the west end of the room. This would give a secure room area to become the storage area for extra clothes, Joe's clothes that he left there, and dry food storage.

So on Monday morning, hurting leg and all, Joe and Andy walked about 3 blocks to a store where they purchased most of the building material including screen material to cover all windows. After eating lunch he hobbled back to the Cikal House to see what the new brick work was doing to the east wall of the new bathroom. As he got to the house, what a surprise, the children were there with very big smiles on their faces.

Joe blames a lot of his new emotions on the 2 heart attacks he had in Oct 2004 as the doctor said he could become emotional with or without cause at times. But he controlled the emotions and went back to the Cikal House to tell Angela. So they all go back and the kids indicated that they are very pleased with what we have. For a typical American child, they would have been appalled at what they would see, but these children had been living in very substandard conditions from the very low income of the adults that had been taking care of them. (You can see some of the remodel pictures in the Photo Album page.)

Now the children were having well prepared complete meals of rice, vegetables, and some kind of meat. They have filtered  safe-clean water, tea, juice, and milk daily, something have not had for a long time. Demma, a 6 year old girl, was covered by chaffing boil type bumps on her caused by diet and non-supervised cleaning all over her legs and was beginning on her arms. Within 2 weeks, her legs had cleared up with the help of Hannah. Hannah worked in a pharmacy for a few years and is a great cook.

Time came to go home and had to say an emotional goodbye to this new family that came into my life. Being called grandpa Joe and with "almost" smiles from the children as they were sad for me to leave, I hugged each one, along with all the Tobings. Afterwards as he was on his way to the hotel for a night's sleep before leaving, he thought back to those hugs and it was almost forced torture within his soul as he chocked up and almost did not get through all of the hugs as his composure was falling apart, again.

So out of this trip that changed so much of what was planned to happen, Cikal now needs your support even more.  We would like to purchase land within a few miles of where they are at and keep it off the hi-way far enough to keep the price of the land under $20,000 for a hectare of land (about 3.5 acres.)

Contact us as to how you can get involved and go to our Getting Involved page for more information.

supportthekids@compassion-4-kids-int.org  

OR 

compassion4kids@compassion-4-kids-int.org