Written by Core Leader, Cristina Espiritu
This is only the 3rd event we had with seniors. We can have more in the future depending on what our sponsors wants. It was a drizzly day on the morning of January 12, 2013 when I first laid eyes on the Missionaries of Charity hospice in Tayuman Street, Tondo, Manila. Together with U! Happy Events founder, Harvard Uy de Baron, I met the head mistress of the hospice, Sister Denise, who had been with the Manila organization since 1978. She was later to introduce us to the elderly residents whom we would later found out were either taken from the streets found wandering, or brought by concerned relatives or citizens into the center. A few of them were ill or stricken with cerebral palsy. They started to be cheerful with big smiles etched on their faces when we began to spend time with them. All of them had stories to share.
Missionaries of Charity is a charitable organization for the sick, abandoned and the dying destitute that was founded by Mother Teresa in Calcutta, India in 1950. From a modest number of 13 followers, the congregation has grown to over 4,500 sisters and thousands of brothers who are spread over 133 countries. Their mission is to “care for the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.”*
Just the kind of people that U! Happy volunteers care about; and gladly spend time, money and effort to reach out to.
When we arrived at the congregation in Tayuman, we discovered that another group of volunteers, this time from Xavier School in Greenhills, San Juan, had gotten there ahead of us. We decided to enlist them in our activity and they gamely volunteered to join us. Together with these 15 to 16 years old high school kids, we played games of “xxxx” and “xxxx” with the residents inside the chapel until it was time for their 11 a.m. mass to start. Each volunteer had a partner to get to know and we had a grand time discovering their favorite food, favorite actor/actress and many other personal trivia that jogged old memories and elicited laughs and smiles from some of the residents.
After the mass, the Xavier boys did a “One Direction” band type of performance and sang songs to the lolos and lolas in the crowd. By this time, we had all moved away from the chapel into the roofed open air area, where they had the opportunity to watch the performance sitting from their wheelchairs all lined up along the sides of the hallway.
Before we knew it, it was time to say goodbye. We paid our goodbye greetings to lolo and lola and introduced one of U! Happy’s most generous donors, Mr. Vittorio Lim, to Sister Denice. Kuya Vi had decided to donate a significant cash to the congregation and humbly deferred when asked his name by Sister Denise, saying, “oh you don’t need to know my name”. We would never have gotten to where it is today if not for special donors like Kuya Vi.
From Tayuman Tondo that day, we went off to have lunch before going to our next volunteer activity in Tuklasan , San Juan. We were tired and yet happy. This was indeed a day well spent.
*”For Theirs Is The Kingdom of Heaven”, Liza Marie T. Rico, The Manila Times, July 29, 2012.
