20 Years of Helping People in the Philippines

“I’m standing in Payatas,” Gordon Robertson said in 2000. “On July 10th, a mountain of trash behind me literally blew up and then buried the shantytown to my right, killing 209 people.”

It was July 1997. Operation Blessing Philippines was a year old.  And Robertson, founder of the ministry, had just launched a feeding program for undernourished children living in manila’s biggest dumpsite.  A few weeks later, heavy rains there caused a massive landslide.

“What triggered the activity was a desire on the part of Operation Blessing in the United States to do a feeding program to the trash-picker community in Payatas,”Gordon recalled.  “And so when the landslide came, we were there. And that started a whole ministry to that community. ‘Cause as I’m standing, giving out food, the idea was ‘let’s give two weeks of food. And as I’m standing giving out food to people in desperate need, the question came to me, well, what happens in two weeks? This food’s gonna run out in two weeks, and these people are still gonna be here on this trash dump.’ And I had to do something about that”.

Since it was founded in 1996, Operation Blessing Philippines had been bringing short-term medical missions to remote parts of the country. With the help of volunteer medical teams, we’d reached thousands of Filipinos who had no access to doctors or hospitals. Now, a year later, we had another vision: to transform disadvantaged families and communities.

According to Gordon, “That started the whole Payatas program, where we started feeding malnourished children, we adopted their families, not just the children, but their whole family. And how do we teach livelihood to the parents, how do we teach proper nutrition, proper sanitation, how do we get rid of the intestinal worms, how do we bring them back into health. Make sure the children can go to school, because that’s the key long-term, generationally for them to advance. And how do we teach parents how to earn a living so they don’t have to pick trash anymore? And we did that successfully with the first group, and then to my absolute amazement, the graduates of the first group said, ‘we want to help, we want to train the next group’. And so that’s how it just started…and it just became a great joy.”

While the Payatas community program was underway, Operation Blessing Philippines was also helping rebuild lives destroyed by another tragedy several months earlier.

“March 18, 1996 holds a dreadful memory for the families of the more than 200 young people celebrating Graduation Day at the now infamous Ozone disco,” Gordon recalls. “A majority of them perished in the most tragic fire disaster of the decade. Ninety-five survivors now have burn scars to remind them of the catastrophe.”

“At the time of the Ozone disco fire, we didn’t have much money. We didn’t have many personnel. I think our total staff at that point was three people. And here was a horrific fire, and horrific damage to people, where literally their fingers were fused together. They weren’t able to use their hands, they weren’t able to extend their arms. The devastation was, was just horrific,” Gordon recalls. “And I was praying and got this verse, ‘What does your, what does God require of you? And it was, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before Him.’ At that point in time, there was just one burn unit, the hospitals were being overwhelmed with these cases.

And I had to do something. I had to extend mercy to these survivors with horrific injuries.”

So CBN took a step of faith and made arrangements to bring in a team of plastic surgeons from the U.S.

“Every time we took a step to say, ‘we’re going to love mercy’, God came through. He kept providing, kept providing, kept providing. And the results were thrilling, where people got use of their hands back. One young man didn’t have an eyelid. If he didn’t have that repaired, he was going to lose his eye. So the surgeons recreated an eyelid for him,” says Gordon.  “Some got brand-new ears, where the surgeons brought in this wonderful material that skin would grow over. They literally sculpted ears for them again. So it was tremendous, it was a great, looking back on it, it was a great thrill. It was a great struggle while it was going on, but the results were wonderful.”

In December 1997, Operations Blessing Philippines and a team of volunteer doctors began reaching out to other nations in Asia.

“The first foreign medical mission that we did with Operation Blessing Philippines was to Xiamen, China. And we went into a three-self church in Xiamen, and absolutely wonderful things happened. And we started seeing miracles happen in the medical tent, where Christian doctors were praying for their patients and seeing miracles,” Gordon recalls.  “And so that was the very first one, and that really inspired us that we could do this, and we could do this internationally. And then when the Flying Hospital went to Hyderabad, India, it just became natural that a Philippine team would come alongside as well.”

In the years that followed, Operation Blessing Philippines went on medical missions to Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Afghanistan.

“It was the model that was followed for OB Indonesia, OB India, OB Thailand, OB Hong Kong, OB China. All of them were modeled on what happened here, and the experience that we learned here,” says Gordon. “That we could do medical missions in-country, we could do livelihood programs, we could have significant life-changing surgeries. We could drill freshwater wells, we could do disaster relief teams. All of it was birthed here in Manila.”

Over the past 20 years, Operation Blessing Philippines has partnered with the local government, NGOs, and churches to help roughly 800 children go to school, and more than a thousand people learn a trade.  Nearly 3,000 children get good meals now. And we’ve helped more than 4,000 families start businesses. We’ve built more than 300 houses, three learning centers, and almost 30 classrooms.  We’ve dug water wells for almost a thousand families, given more than 6,000 people mobility, and provided surgery for nearly 3,000 people.

In total, we’ve treated more than 800,000 people through our medical missions in hard-to-reach areas, and extended aid to more than 2 million survivors of natural disasters.

Four separate times, Operation Blessing Philippines has received the NGO of the Year award from the armed forces of the Philippines.

Wherever we go, we bring the message of the gospel.

“I believe in the gospel. I believe it transforms people. That you can take care of the material needs, but if you haven’t taken care of the spiritual needs, you haven’t really done anything for them,” says Gordon.  “And it’s the two working together where you have life transformation, where you have that hand up, you have that hope and a future.”

“Dolores, a 68 years old who suffered a stroke and lost the use of her left side, and she’s been bedridden ever since. Today, we’re giving Dolores a wheelchair, but we’re also supplying her with goods for her sari-sari store, it’s a small general store. We’re giving her mobility, we’re giving her livelihood, and now we wanna do something even more. We wanna pray for Dolores that God would come and heal her and set her free from this stroke.”

Gordon recalled, “And so we prayed for her. And then I said, ‘Can you get up? Can you stand up?’ And then she looked at me and that suddenly seemed like a good idea to her. And so she stood up and then she started to walk and we got her to walk from one point to another. And then it dawned on her, I’m walking, I haven’t been able to do this in a long time, I’m walking. And the joy in her face, and the joy all around us, you know, that was a moment, that was a wonderful moment.”

In June 2016, Operation Blessing Philippines celebrated its 20th anniversary. The highlight of this milestone event was our most ambitious program yet - the Community of Hope in Tacloban City, a brand new community built for more than 300 families whose homes were destroyed in 2013 by a typhoon.

“I think the greatest accomplishment here was although the relief effort after that horrible typhoon that wiped out Tacloban, and here, Operation Blessing Philippines was on the ground within 24 hours, giving much-needed food, water, temporary housing, medical care to people in desperate need,” Gordon said. “But it didn’t stop there. Here we are, years later, two and a half years later, and Operation Blessing is still on the ground working, and trying to provide homes for people in need. And we’re on our way to completing a whole village of brand-new homes that will be typhoon-resistant, and I couldn’t be prouder of what they’ve done.”

Doctor Kim Pascual, Head of Operation Blessing Philippines, says the driving force behind our first 20 years of transforming lives will continue to propel us into the decades ahead.

“I think it’s the passion to love God, to serve God, and to help people. The things that, when you see pain, hurts, you always want to help. And you know that God wants to help. And you’re just open for God to use you to help the people,” says Pascual. “If we can create different Communities of Hope, we will be able to change the country. And one of these days, the whole country is a Community of Hope - loving God, serving God, and loving people.”

“And that’s the story of Operation Blessing Philippines,” says Gordon.  “We started very small, very humbly. With just two people in a room, saying, ‘How can we do good for people?’ And it’s grown into this tremendous thing. And now you look at the ability to actually rebuild communities? And put in schools, and rebuild churches, and rebuild homes? You know, when disasters strike, let’s strike back, and do it significantly. Over the next 20 years, what can happen, and how can we say, ‘We can believe God for even more, and what more things can we do?’”