I never planned to leave the Philippines.

In June 1991 Mount Pinatubo exploded, burying my hometown in ash and despair. Coca‑Cola had just transferred me into a comfortable corporate post, yet every morning I drove past children coughing in grey dust and hospitals that had no gauze, no antibiotics, no hope.

When a visiting American relief worker named, Carolyn  George (then CEO), told me about a Detroit charity called World Medical Relief that shipped surplus medical supplies around the globe, something in me cracked open.

If I could only get a few boxes…

I volunteered to be her “mission coordinator.” For twelve months I begged local doctors, sorted bandages, and packed crates for strangers I couldn’t see. On the day the last container rolled toward the port, Carolyn phoned:

“George, come to Detroit. Help us do this every day.”

I promised my family I would return in a year.

I have been here 32 years. Only visiting the Philippines when I can.

At first I worked 48 hours a week without pay, organizing surgical instruments in WMR’s eight‑storey warehouse on Rosa Parks Boulevard. Mrs. Irene Auberline, our fearless 93‑year‑old founder, gripped my hands and whispered the words that still drive me:

“You help the sick poor because God loves them.”

Since that night I have slept on pallets in Haitian ports, loaded containers beside volunteers, and held Detroit grandmothers who finally received the insulin they could not afford. I have missed birthdays, graduations and entire seasons with my wife and five children—yet every pallet that leaves our dock carries a piece of my heart back to the ashes of Pinatubo.

My job is no longer a job; it is my covenant:

to turn surplus into salvation, and to make sure the cry of the forgotten is always answered.