Message from the Executive Director

I am thankful to call Cebu my home!  The families of the Philippines, especially the children, have captured my heart.

Through my life journey, God has paved the path to where I am today.  I lost both of my parents to cancer.  My mom lost her 13-year battle to breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 55 and my dad at the age of 59 battling an aggressive form of leukemia.  He died within four months of receiving his diagnosis in 2000.  This was a difficult time for our family.  One of the comforting parts of losing my mom was the hospital staff who was by our side as she died.  I knew I wanted to provide similar support to families one day.

After the loss of my parents, I decided to go back to school to become a nurse.  While in nursing school, I was given the opportunity to go on my first mission to the Philippines where I volunteered in a maternity clinic.  After graduating in 2009, I returned back to Cebu for six months.  I then returned back to the USA for a year and a half working as a nurse before moving full-time to the Philippines in December 2011.

In 2011, God birthed the name Everlasting HOPE in my heart.  All I knew for certain was that He wanted for the people of the Philippines to have HOPE through Jesus.

As I served in the community, my eyes were opened to the reality of families living in the Philippines, most of which were living on less than $4 a day.  I also witnessed many families unable to provide proper medical care for their children, primarily due to a lack of finances and resources but also due to a lack of knowledge.  Because of this, I witnessed many children die unnecessarily.

To maintain my nursing license, I returned back to the States in 2013, where I was given the opportunity to walk alongside a family for six months whose daughter had a brain tumor.  After returning back to Cebu, I encountered a young Filipino boy with Osteosarcoma in September 2014.  This was the first child I had encountered in the Philippines with cancer.  While working with these and other families, it solidified in my heart what our team is called to do in Cebu.  We are called to provide emotional and spiritual support to children with cancer and their families and to support them in accessing resources and housing so that they can have the best quality of life possible.

In Cebu, there are not programs set in place to provide the resources necessary to support these children like we find in America.  Many families are left in desperate situations and feeling without hope.  We look forward to supporting many families in the years to come and pointing them to Jesus who is their only source of HOPE.

Kristina Andersen, Executive Director