We arrived at the orphanage on Monday, April 14 th, a day later than we had previously planned. This because of bad weather at our destination airport which forced us to overnight in Manila Sunday before proceeding on to Surigao City, Mindanao where the orphanage, Atlantis, is located.

Joao, Christian, and I were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived at Atlantis late Monday afternoon, but we were uplifted with our warm greeting and seeing all the improvements. Christian and I had not been there for almost two years and were pleasantly surprised with all of its renovations.

The first areas we toured were very rough, but at least all of the children were able to live here now and were safely out of harms way.

Gradually we began to enter into more "finished" rooms like this combination pre-school room and orphanage office. Notice the beautiful floor. So much better than the cement that had been there before.

The dining area:

And their very simple kitchen. It really could use some improvements. They cook for 50 plus people here:

Then it was on to the even more finished areas like this boy’s sleeping room:

And the girl’s sleeping room:

The Founder and President of the orphanage’s Philippines non-profit corporation, Charisma Bethel Children’s Home, is Marilou Navarro. Here you can see her talking to me about the beds that have been being made as their budget permits so the children don’t have to sleep on the floor. "Only about 16 more to go" she told me:

The children all share these clothes together and they are kept in one central place. Eventually we’re hoping to have separate shelves for each child to have his/her "own clothes" to wear:

We went outside to view their washing and shower area. Basically it’s a water faucet and some buckets:

And here’s a sheltered place to dry their clothes where they won’t get rained on:

By this time in my tour, I was beginning to sense something I didn’t expect to find. Although I was impressed with how much had been done in terms of the renovation work at the new location of Atlantis, the children and staff seemed "poorer" and "more in need" than when I had last visited almost two years previously.

I’ll comment further on this in my next message and we’ll continue on with our first day’s tour.

Until then, thanks for listening,

Scott & Team