Breaking Bobby's Chains
Donation protected
BREAKING BOBBY’S CHAINS
Bobby Seno took out a home construction loan and built his new bride a house right before a major hurricane hit, which destroyed their house. There was no mortgage or homeowners insurance. He is drowning in debt still paying for a home that was destroyed. Nearly all of his wages as a high school teacher have been garnished, making it extremely difficult to feed his family and survive on his income. This GoFundMe petition for $20,000 has been created by his friends to pay off all of his existing hurricane related debt, so that he may finally be able to support his family and be in a position to help others to do the same.
I’ve known Bobby Mendoza Seno and his wife, Ludivina for over a year. We’ve texted and talked every day. Their story, and their lives are remarkable. I hope that when you get to know them, you’ll love them as much as I do. These are very dear people.
Where they live
Bobby and Ludie live in a small plywood shack in a rice field on the island of Leyte, in the Philippines. No running water, no toilet, no refrigerator, and only sporadic electricity. There’s a well for water, but it’s infested with parasites from a fresh water snail, schistosomiasis.
They travel to town on an open air bus to buy drinking water, but bathing and washing their clothes in the parasite infested water still infects them all.
This was the only house they could find after typhoon Haiyan - hurricane Yolanda devastated Leyte in 2013.
In a place where so many are jobless and homeless, they feel blessed to have this little house, and thank God for it.
What Bobby does
Bobby now has a Master degree and teaches 8th graders at Palo National High School, which has a student body of about 4,000.
He’s the section leader and teaches the “Values” classes – helping students to live the Golden Rule, become good citizens, and hopefully become good human beings.
He teaches ten classes each week with a class size of 30 - 50 students, or about 500 students each week. That’s a lot of papers to grade and parents to interact with. He also writes the school district Values curriculum for about 5,000 district 8th graders. He works long hours, but he loves his job. And his students love him.
What Bobby earns
Bobby is paid a teacher’s salary equivalent to about $319.00 per month in the US. Like all the teachers there, Bobby has to buy classroom supplies out of his own pocket. Even teachers here who earn ten times what Bobby earns understand how hard that can be.
But Bobby is one of the lucky ones in the Philippines. There are very few jobs and very few houses there: Bobby has both.
The girl of his dreams
But best of all, Bobby married the girl of his dreams, Ludivina (Ludie). She adores him. She shares his compassion and generous heart, encourages him daily, and keeps him positive in times of overwhelming stress. She is his joy and his great love. They make a good team.
Bobby and Ludie in happier days before the hurricane hit.
Out of the poverty cycle
As a little boy, Bobby decided to get good grades, go to college and find a way to keep himself and his family out of the endless poverty cycle of the Philippines. He went to college and got his bachelor’s degree in teaching, while helping his father in the family fishing business and also running his own business supplying roofing materials for houses native to the climate of the Philippines.
The dream home
When he had graduated from college with his bachelor degree in secondary education, served a Christian mission for his church, and had a good teaching contract – he asked the girl of his dreams to marry him, and she said yes! They started out with so much hope for the future!
Best friends, married at last, their dream come true.
Bobby took out a construction loan for a new concrete home, which he and Ludie designed with the help of a civil engineer and an architect to withstand island storms. He built his bride a new house next to his parents’ ancestral home in Tacloban, which he also updated and renovated for them with his construction loan.
Bobby planned to live next door to his aging parents and care for them for the rest of their lives. Bobby’s childhood determination to keep his family out of the poverty cycle was becoming a reality.
Bobby's parents Alfredo and Maria
But only the wealthy in the Philippines can afford mortgage or homeowner insurance, or any insurance at all. There wasn’t any affordable insurance available to Bobby, or to his father. His new home construction loan was wrapped with his father‘s fishing business, and his own roofing business, both doing very well — and Bobby had a teaching contract, too.
The nightmare begins
Seven months after Bobby and Ludie were married and had moved into their new home life was peaceful. Bobby was teaching; Ludie was in college working towards her teaching degree. They were happy, and planning to start a family.
A hurricane warning came in, but there are always hurricane warnings in the Philippines; they weren’t too worried. Then they heard that hurricane Yolanda was going to make landfall directly on their town, Tacloban. But their new home was built to withstand hurricanes. They thought.
Bobby’s brother and father wanted to stay in the house and ride out the storm to protect their belongings from the inevitable looters who show up after hurricanes. But Bobby was impressed by an urgent spiritual warning to take his wife and mother and run for the cement block church a mile away. Bobby, his mother Maria, and Ludie ran for the church with only a blanket and pillow, thinking they‘d be home the next morning. They didn’t know that typhoon Haiyan - hurricane Yolanda was shaping up to become the biggest hurricane ever recorded in the history of the planet, with gale force winds of 195 mph, and gusts over 230 mph - headed straight for them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SHHgcAZ-s&feature=share
The darkest night
They made it into the church as windows shattered and the tile roof blew off. It was dark, the storm was raging, torrential rains pounding, and they lost each other in the darkness. Terrified, they cried and prayed for each other through the long night.
In the morning as the storm had passed, those who were in interior rooms, and those who had located the church bathrooms and clung to the toilets bolted to the floors had survived. Some didn’t. But Bobby found his mother and his wife alive! There was great joy!
Then Bobby’s brother, who had miraculously survived, ran to the church to tell Bobby that their father was dead in the rubble. There was great, deep sadness.
Ludie sits in what is left of her new house
The darker day
As they crept out of the wreckage of the church building into the sunlight, the emotion of what they saw probably can’t be adequately expressed in human words. Every fishing boat, every car, every house and building and bus and telephone pole was shredded, and under water.
Family, friends, and neighbors they had known all their lives were dead and floating in muddy pools of water all around them. In that moment, life changed for Bobby and his family.
Long days - no help on the horizon
For several days there was a horrible silence: no government help came, no help came from the Red Cross or the churches, there was no food to eat or water to drink; no place to sleep or get dry, and all the dead bodies around them were beginning to smell bad.
There are many details of those days that Bobby and Ludie still can’t even bear to talk about.
It was six days before crews could get into the area to locate his father’s dead body and pull him from the debris. They found Bobby’s father buried in mud: they said he was found clinging to his Holy Scriptures and his hymn book. We, who have not yet experienced such grief in our lifetimes cannot even imagine the spectrum of human emotion in those moments, and in those words.
His father’s fishing business and boats, Bobby’s roofing supply business, both of their homes, and the school where Bobby taught were totally destroyed. Teachers, students and entire families were dead or missing.
Bobby's classroom after the hurricane.
It would be two years before Americans came in and rebuilt the school. Meanwhile some classes were being held in makeshift tents. Bobby’s school district was struggling to restructure in the chaos. His anchor job was in limbo, and they were homeless.
A blessing in the rice field
Some friends of Bobby’s had a vacant temporary worker shack in a rice field inland where the storm had not hit so hard. It was still standing, and they offered it to Bobby and Ludie as a temporary shelter until they could find something else. Five years later they’re still there: there is nothing else.
When it rains, the water rises to to floor...
Bobby, his new bride Ludie and his widowed mother Maria had lost everything they owned except a pillow and a blanket for each of them. They started life all over again in the little plywood shack in the rice field. They tenderly cared for Maria, who was in deep mourning for her husband.
They sold their wedding rings and contributed the money to a community food fund for their neighbors. Ludie sold her earrings for food. With no other help available, Bobby used up the remaining credit on his cards to help feed the starving families around them, many with small children. He maxed out his cards literally saving the lives of family and friends - hopeful that somehow, with faith and hard work he would someday be able to pay his debts.
But the moneylenders never take a break in a disaster
Payments on Bobby’s new home loan, wrapped with both family businesses, were still due on time, even though the home and the businesses were totally destroyed. Bobby was living day to day on his good credit, feeding his own family and using it to help others all around him. Interest mounted, late fees were adding up, and payments were being calculated as interest only, never touching the principal. Unable to make the payments on all the mounting debts, Bobby’s wages as a teacher were garnished by the money lenders.
Bobbys only shoes during the rescue and following year as he foraged for weeds to feed his family. We just cannot comprehend such poverty.
The chains that bind
All but $39.00 per month of the $319.00 per month teacher’s salary Bobby works so hard to earn is deducted each month. Minimum payments don’t even touch the principal loan balances at 20% and 24% interest. But his classroom supplies for those 500 students have to come out of pocket, too, and there is only $39 left in his pocket.
Bobby will be in the chains of debtor’s prison for the rest of his life, with no way out at this rate.
A remarkable man
But as I told you, Bobby Mendoza Seno is a remarkable man. Living in a shack that most Americans would not consider fit for a dog kennel, Bobby and Ludie have praised God daily, have continued to thank Him for their many blessings, and have continued to honor and care for their elderly widowed mother, Maria.
When they heard of a *widow who had lost her husband, all five children, her home and all earthly belongings in the storm and was wandering around in her grief yelling at God for leaving her alive — Bobby and Ludie took her into their home and family.
When they heard about a homeless elderly woman whose family had left her alone and moved north without her, Bobbie and Ludie took her in, too, and gave her a new family.
Then when Bobby’s brother and his wife were struggling to find work and couldn't afford to feed their baby, Bobby and Ludie brought him into their home, also.
Grandma Maria cares for baby Adrian and snuggles him during the night. She receives $10.00 per month social security, and contributes that to the household to feed and care for her grandson.
Do the math
This means that Bobby, his wife, three widows and an infant in a shack with no running water, no refrigerator and no toilet, were surviving on less than $49.00 total income per month. Their church did not help. Their government did not help, and the world does not know. They have done every odd job they could find, foraged for edible weeds to survive, and prayed to God to sustain them as Bobby teaches about patience to his 500 students.
Bobby writes the “Values Curriculum“ for the school district and teaches 8th graders about the Golden Rule, non-violence, being peacemakers, patience, and personal integrity. And Bobby Mendoza Seno walks his talk every day of his life.
When things have been bleakest and the suffering was bearing down on them, they just doubled down in prayers of gratitude for their blessings, and they have lived on miracles day to day. They still do.
Even more love
Last year they heard of a teenage girl whose family moved away and left her on her own with nothing but the option to survive on the streets the way that poor girls all over the world in every culture have had to stay alive. So Bobby and Ludie took her in, also, and gave her a home and a family and a safe way forward in her own new life.
Then recently they heard of another young girl in an extremely unsafe family situation with no way out, headed into a street gang and a hard life ahead. So they took her in, too.
Bobby and his wife and those widows, those teenage girls, and that baby boy have had nothing in life but a spot on the floor in a plywood shack in a rice field, but they have love, and they have a family. And Bobby supports them all on $39.00 per month, after the money lenders take everything else he earns.
In the summer they all do whatever jobs they can find, but this is the Philippines. There aren’t many jobs. So they work in the rice fields harvesting rice, and they are paid in rice, which the moneylenders can’t take from them. They have had rice to eat, and little else.
Real life
We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan who stopped to help a man by the side of the road who had been beaten and robbed. He bound up his wounds and took him to an innkeeper to stay and recover. The Samaritan spent his own money to cover the cost of the room and the food so the man could heal. That story is an example to people of all ages about how a truly good man treats others.
Bobby Seno had no money to support his wife and mother after the hurricane struck, no money to give to support homeless widows and teenage girls and his brother’s baby. But that didn’t stop him from being a Good Samaritan. He just took them in under his own roof and into his own family.
His story is a living example of how a truly good man treats women and children. Yes, there are good men in this world, and Bobby is one of them.
The goal of this GoFundMe request is to raise $20,000 to pay off all of Bobby’s moneylenders in full, breaking his chains, so that he can finally receive the full $319.00 salary he works so hard to earn each month.
Any remaining donation amount after high interest loans at 24% and 20 % will go towards a new roof on his shack, new floors to replace rotting joists and floor boards, patching plywood walls against the weather, bringing in dirt for a raised area above the rice field water table to install a composting toilet/outhouse, and pouring cement on the patio living area so they don’t keep tracking in ankle deep mud during the rainy season.
There are millions of poor, needing our help, all around us, all the time. Most of us are limited in how we can help, and what our own finances will bear.
As for me, I’ll gladly give whatever I can to help break Bobby’s chains because I know that he is the kind of man who will then turn and lift and strengthen the poor around him, and break their chains, too.
He has already proven this.
I know that any gift to him will ultimately bless many others. So I count this as a wise use of my own hard earned money.
Someone has stepped forward to cover any GoFundMe fees, so 100% of everything contributed will go to Bobby, with no deductions.
Thank you to Bobby and Ludie, and the dear people of the Philippines, for showing us how to live, and love.
Please share their story, help get the word out, and please send them whatever you can.
May God bless us all to be a little more like Bobby and Ludie, and to learn to live by the Golden Rule in our own daily walk.
Let us become precious to each other.
Very sincerely,
Lynne McKinley, their friend
* Note: The widow who lost her husband and all five of her children in the hurricane and lived with Bobby and Ludie in their care has since remarried and moved on to a new life in Canada.
Note: Because the banking system of the Philippines is not yet supported by the GoFundMe platform for direct deposits, your donations to Breaking Bobby's Chains must come into a US bank account.
I have set up a direct deposit route from GoFundMe into my own bank for this purpose. Your donations come direct to me. I will then send them to Bobby via MoneyGram, a secure transfer method used for the Philippines. I give you my word that every penny you donate will go direct to these dear people, with nothing whatsoever deducted for any fees or expenses. Thank you sincerely for your compassion and generosity.
Bobby Seno took out a home construction loan and built his new bride a house right before a major hurricane hit, which destroyed their house. There was no mortgage or homeowners insurance. He is drowning in debt still paying for a home that was destroyed. Nearly all of his wages as a high school teacher have been garnished, making it extremely difficult to feed his family and survive on his income. This GoFundMe petition for $20,000 has been created by his friends to pay off all of his existing hurricane related debt, so that he may finally be able to support his family and be in a position to help others to do the same.
I’ve known Bobby Mendoza Seno and his wife, Ludivina for over a year. We’ve texted and talked every day. Their story, and their lives are remarkable. I hope that when you get to know them, you’ll love them as much as I do. These are very dear people.
Where they live
Bobby and Ludie live in a small plywood shack in a rice field on the island of Leyte, in the Philippines. No running water, no toilet, no refrigerator, and only sporadic electricity. There’s a well for water, but it’s infested with parasites from a fresh water snail, schistosomiasis.
They travel to town on an open air bus to buy drinking water, but bathing and washing their clothes in the parasite infested water still infects them all.
This was the only house they could find after typhoon Haiyan - hurricane Yolanda devastated Leyte in 2013.
In a place where so many are jobless and homeless, they feel blessed to have this little house, and thank God for it.
What Bobby does
Bobby now has a Master degree and teaches 8th graders at Palo National High School, which has a student body of about 4,000.
He’s the section leader and teaches the “Values” classes – helping students to live the Golden Rule, become good citizens, and hopefully become good human beings.
He teaches ten classes each week with a class size of 30 - 50 students, or about 500 students each week. That’s a lot of papers to grade and parents to interact with. He also writes the school district Values curriculum for about 5,000 district 8th graders. He works long hours, but he loves his job. And his students love him.
What Bobby earns
Bobby is paid a teacher’s salary equivalent to about $319.00 per month in the US. Like all the teachers there, Bobby has to buy classroom supplies out of his own pocket. Even teachers here who earn ten times what Bobby earns understand how hard that can be.
But Bobby is one of the lucky ones in the Philippines. There are very few jobs and very few houses there: Bobby has both.
The girl of his dreams
But best of all, Bobby married the girl of his dreams, Ludivina (Ludie). She adores him. She shares his compassion and generous heart, encourages him daily, and keeps him positive in times of overwhelming stress. She is his joy and his great love. They make a good team.
Bobby and Ludie in happier days before the hurricane hit.
Out of the poverty cycle
As a little boy, Bobby decided to get good grades, go to college and find a way to keep himself and his family out of the endless poverty cycle of the Philippines. He went to college and got his bachelor’s degree in teaching, while helping his father in the family fishing business and also running his own business supplying roofing materials for houses native to the climate of the Philippines.
The dream home
When he had graduated from college with his bachelor degree in secondary education, served a Christian mission for his church, and had a good teaching contract – he asked the girl of his dreams to marry him, and she said yes! They started out with so much hope for the future!
Best friends, married at last, their dream come true.
Bobby took out a construction loan for a new concrete home, which he and Ludie designed with the help of a civil engineer and an architect to withstand island storms. He built his bride a new house next to his parents’ ancestral home in Tacloban, which he also updated and renovated for them with his construction loan.
Bobby planned to live next door to his aging parents and care for them for the rest of their lives. Bobby’s childhood determination to keep his family out of the poverty cycle was becoming a reality.
Bobby's parents Alfredo and Maria
But only the wealthy in the Philippines can afford mortgage or homeowner insurance, or any insurance at all. There wasn’t any affordable insurance available to Bobby, or to his father. His new home construction loan was wrapped with his father‘s fishing business, and his own roofing business, both doing very well — and Bobby had a teaching contract, too.
The nightmare begins
Seven months after Bobby and Ludie were married and had moved into their new home life was peaceful. Bobby was teaching; Ludie was in college working towards her teaching degree. They were happy, and planning to start a family.
A hurricane warning came in, but there are always hurricane warnings in the Philippines; they weren’t too worried. Then they heard that hurricane Yolanda was going to make landfall directly on their town, Tacloban. But their new home was built to withstand hurricanes. They thought.
Bobby’s brother and father wanted to stay in the house and ride out the storm to protect their belongings from the inevitable looters who show up after hurricanes. But Bobby was impressed by an urgent spiritual warning to take his wife and mother and run for the cement block church a mile away. Bobby, his mother Maria, and Ludie ran for the church with only a blanket and pillow, thinking they‘d be home the next morning. They didn’t know that typhoon Haiyan - hurricane Yolanda was shaping up to become the biggest hurricane ever recorded in the history of the planet, with gale force winds of 195 mph, and gusts over 230 mph - headed straight for them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90SHHgcAZ-s&feature=share
The darkest night
They made it into the church as windows shattered and the tile roof blew off. It was dark, the storm was raging, torrential rains pounding, and they lost each other in the darkness. Terrified, they cried and prayed for each other through the long night.
In the morning as the storm had passed, those who were in interior rooms, and those who had located the church bathrooms and clung to the toilets bolted to the floors had survived. Some didn’t. But Bobby found his mother and his wife alive! There was great joy!
Then Bobby’s brother, who had miraculously survived, ran to the church to tell Bobby that their father was dead in the rubble. There was great, deep sadness.
Ludie sits in what is left of her new house
The darker day
As they crept out of the wreckage of the church building into the sunlight, the emotion of what they saw probably can’t be adequately expressed in human words. Every fishing boat, every car, every house and building and bus and telephone pole was shredded, and under water.
Family, friends, and neighbors they had known all their lives were dead and floating in muddy pools of water all around them. In that moment, life changed for Bobby and his family.
Long days - no help on the horizon
For several days there was a horrible silence: no government help came, no help came from the Red Cross or the churches, there was no food to eat or water to drink; no place to sleep or get dry, and all the dead bodies around them were beginning to smell bad.
There are many details of those days that Bobby and Ludie still can’t even bear to talk about.
It was six days before crews could get into the area to locate his father’s dead body and pull him from the debris. They found Bobby’s father buried in mud: they said he was found clinging to his Holy Scriptures and his hymn book. We, who have not yet experienced such grief in our lifetimes cannot even imagine the spectrum of human emotion in those moments, and in those words.
His father’s fishing business and boats, Bobby’s roofing supply business, both of their homes, and the school where Bobby taught were totally destroyed. Teachers, students and entire families were dead or missing.
Bobby's classroom after the hurricane.
It would be two years before Americans came in and rebuilt the school. Meanwhile some classes were being held in makeshift tents. Bobby’s school district was struggling to restructure in the chaos. His anchor job was in limbo, and they were homeless.
A blessing in the rice field
Some friends of Bobby’s had a vacant temporary worker shack in a rice field inland where the storm had not hit so hard. It was still standing, and they offered it to Bobby and Ludie as a temporary shelter until they could find something else. Five years later they’re still there: there is nothing else.
When it rains, the water rises to to floor...
Bobby, his new bride Ludie and his widowed mother Maria had lost everything they owned except a pillow and a blanket for each of them. They started life all over again in the little plywood shack in the rice field. They tenderly cared for Maria, who was in deep mourning for her husband.
They sold their wedding rings and contributed the money to a community food fund for their neighbors. Ludie sold her earrings for food. With no other help available, Bobby used up the remaining credit on his cards to help feed the starving families around them, many with small children. He maxed out his cards literally saving the lives of family and friends - hopeful that somehow, with faith and hard work he would someday be able to pay his debts.
But the moneylenders never take a break in a disaster
Payments on Bobby’s new home loan, wrapped with both family businesses, were still due on time, even though the home and the businesses were totally destroyed. Bobby was living day to day on his good credit, feeding his own family and using it to help others all around him. Interest mounted, late fees were adding up, and payments were being calculated as interest only, never touching the principal. Unable to make the payments on all the mounting debts, Bobby’s wages as a teacher were garnished by the money lenders.
Bobbys only shoes during the rescue and following year as he foraged for weeds to feed his family. We just cannot comprehend such poverty.
The chains that bind
All but $39.00 per month of the $319.00 per month teacher’s salary Bobby works so hard to earn is deducted each month. Minimum payments don’t even touch the principal loan balances at 20% and 24% interest. But his classroom supplies for those 500 students have to come out of pocket, too, and there is only $39 left in his pocket.
Bobby will be in the chains of debtor’s prison for the rest of his life, with no way out at this rate.
A remarkable man
But as I told you, Bobby Mendoza Seno is a remarkable man. Living in a shack that most Americans would not consider fit for a dog kennel, Bobby and Ludie have praised God daily, have continued to thank Him for their many blessings, and have continued to honor and care for their elderly widowed mother, Maria.
When they heard of a *widow who had lost her husband, all five children, her home and all earthly belongings in the storm and was wandering around in her grief yelling at God for leaving her alive — Bobby and Ludie took her into their home and family.
When they heard about a homeless elderly woman whose family had left her alone and moved north without her, Bobbie and Ludie took her in, too, and gave her a new family.
Then when Bobby’s brother and his wife were struggling to find work and couldn't afford to feed their baby, Bobby and Ludie brought him into their home, also.
Grandma Maria cares for baby Adrian and snuggles him during the night. She receives $10.00 per month social security, and contributes that to the household to feed and care for her grandson.
Do the math
This means that Bobby, his wife, three widows and an infant in a shack with no running water, no refrigerator and no toilet, were surviving on less than $49.00 total income per month. Their church did not help. Their government did not help, and the world does not know. They have done every odd job they could find, foraged for edible weeds to survive, and prayed to God to sustain them as Bobby teaches about patience to his 500 students.
Bobby writes the “Values Curriculum“ for the school district and teaches 8th graders about the Golden Rule, non-violence, being peacemakers, patience, and personal integrity. And Bobby Mendoza Seno walks his talk every day of his life.
When things have been bleakest and the suffering was bearing down on them, they just doubled down in prayers of gratitude for their blessings, and they have lived on miracles day to day. They still do.
Even more love
Last year they heard of a teenage girl whose family moved away and left her on her own with nothing but the option to survive on the streets the way that poor girls all over the world in every culture have had to stay alive. So Bobby and Ludie took her in, also, and gave her a home and a family and a safe way forward in her own new life.
Then recently they heard of another young girl in an extremely unsafe family situation with no way out, headed into a street gang and a hard life ahead. So they took her in, too.
Bobby and his wife and those widows, those teenage girls, and that baby boy have had nothing in life but a spot on the floor in a plywood shack in a rice field, but they have love, and they have a family. And Bobby supports them all on $39.00 per month, after the money lenders take everything else he earns.
In the summer they all do whatever jobs they can find, but this is the Philippines. There aren’t many jobs. So they work in the rice fields harvesting rice, and they are paid in rice, which the moneylenders can’t take from them. They have had rice to eat, and little else.
Real life
We’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan who stopped to help a man by the side of the road who had been beaten and robbed. He bound up his wounds and took him to an innkeeper to stay and recover. The Samaritan spent his own money to cover the cost of the room and the food so the man could heal. That story is an example to people of all ages about how a truly good man treats others.
Bobby Seno had no money to support his wife and mother after the hurricane struck, no money to give to support homeless widows and teenage girls and his brother’s baby. But that didn’t stop him from being a Good Samaritan. He just took them in under his own roof and into his own family.
His story is a living example of how a truly good man treats women and children. Yes, there are good men in this world, and Bobby is one of them.
The goal of this GoFundMe request is to raise $20,000 to pay off all of Bobby’s moneylenders in full, breaking his chains, so that he can finally receive the full $319.00 salary he works so hard to earn each month.
Any remaining donation amount after high interest loans at 24% and 20 % will go towards a new roof on his shack, new floors to replace rotting joists and floor boards, patching plywood walls against the weather, bringing in dirt for a raised area above the rice field water table to install a composting toilet/outhouse, and pouring cement on the patio living area so they don’t keep tracking in ankle deep mud during the rainy season.
There are millions of poor, needing our help, all around us, all the time. Most of us are limited in how we can help, and what our own finances will bear.
As for me, I’ll gladly give whatever I can to help break Bobby’s chains because I know that he is the kind of man who will then turn and lift and strengthen the poor around him, and break their chains, too.
He has already proven this.
I know that any gift to him will ultimately bless many others. So I count this as a wise use of my own hard earned money.
Someone has stepped forward to cover any GoFundMe fees, so 100% of everything contributed will go to Bobby, with no deductions.
Thank you to Bobby and Ludie, and the dear people of the Philippines, for showing us how to live, and love.
Please share their story, help get the word out, and please send them whatever you can.
May God bless us all to be a little more like Bobby and Ludie, and to learn to live by the Golden Rule in our own daily walk.
Let us become precious to each other.
Very sincerely,
Lynne McKinley, their friend
* Note: The widow who lost her husband and all five of her children in the hurricane and lived with Bobby and Ludie in their care has since remarried and moved on to a new life in Canada.
Note: Because the banking system of the Philippines is not yet supported by the GoFundMe platform for direct deposits, your donations to Breaking Bobby's Chains must come into a US bank account.
I have set up a direct deposit route from GoFundMe into my own bank for this purpose. Your donations come direct to me. I will then send them to Bobby via MoneyGram, a secure transfer method used for the Philippines. I give you my word that every penny you donate will go direct to these dear people, with nothing whatsoever deducted for any fees or expenses. Thank you sincerely for your compassion and generosity.
Organizer
Lynnie Penny
Organizer
Orem, UT