It should have been less by now.

Another Friday has come and has been added to the days we find ourselves in the midst of the pandemic. While most of the UP students have begun their classes online at home, the doctors, nurses, and orderlies of Silungang Molave have begun their next battle in behalf of their COVID patients.

The stress has mounted up once more because only a few weeks prior, the staff at Silungang Molave were treating and caring for only one or two patients. As of this writing, they’re now handling around 10 again. The upsurge in cases that we’re being informed about is their reality and battlefield every day.

As we arrived, you could feel the heaviness and tiredness in the air. This building used to be livelier with the male students staying in this place. Nowadays, however, it’s filled with people fighting an illness and coping with the emotional and mental baggage it brings with it.

While speaking with the staff, we can’t help but notice joy begin to well up in their masked-covered faces. Though this isn’t the first time they’ve received food and PPEs from us, there’s just an unstoppable joy that comes with seeing hope light up in their eyes. We spoke and prayed for them all within less than 20 minutes yet it was the kind of break they needed at that very moment.

As a church community, we will always find ways to serve the UP campus because God has called us here. We see these efforts as a unique opportunity to remind our frontliners that God sees them and has not forgotten them. Through these small acts, we try to preserve the hope in our frontliners. As salt and light, we count it a privilege to serve them, honor them, pray for them, share the Word to them, and ultimately point these true heroes of the pandemic to our Source of hope and provision.