One of my roles in the parish where I work is to be with the poor. Families in the parish who do not have a house fit to live in or are in need a new house, but do not have somewhere to build, are helped with a new house.
Their requests for help comes from the community they live in and brought by the community leader. The needy family attends the monthly meeting of the parish council made up of the leaders of the parishes Christian communities. The leader will then inform the family about how the community is planning to help.
Building houses on coconut plantations is not a problem, the material is all wood and the houses can easily be moved to another site if needed. They need to find wood in the area at a reasonably low price. Bamboo for the floors and walls is in plentiful supply. The community helps with building the home. If the parish council agree and they are ready to start work the parish provides the money for the roof, nails, bolts and any other building materials that needs to be bought.
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On completion of the house and after the family has moved in they ask me to bless the house and a snack is provided for all involved.
The Sismondo family is one such family that the community has helped. Generio and his wife Lin Lin and their two children. Generio helps the landowners to prepare their land for planting rice and at the harvest and in between gets a days work now and again removing weeds. Lin Lin does laundry for some of her neighbours. So you can well imagine how pleased they are with their simple but adequate new home. It consists of a small veranda a room in which they cook at a small wood fire along the wall and a washing up area. There is a table and a bench and a small room for sleeping on mats on the floor. That is all their possessions beside a bag of clothes.
Jaime is the community leader and a full-time builder and as his family own land he gave them the space for their house - bought the materials and did most of the carpenters work. He also helps give out communion every Sunday at the 6:30am parish Mass and does the funerals without Masses in his own community.
Despite the poverty everyone works together.
Columban Fr Damien McKenna has been a missionary in the Philippines since 1969.