It's Not Spaghetti

We wanted to give you an update on our little buddy we took to Gentle Hands. He is being treated for worms, gastral infection and malnourishment. The above picture is not spaghetti. Yup! You guessed it. These are some of the worms that came out of him. When we went to visit him this past week we brought along his four year old sister who is also malnourished and full of worms. She is also now staying at Gentle Hands to be treated. Please pray for continued improvement in both of the children's health. Please pray also for the family that they would come to a loving relationship with Christ.

Christ Is The Only Answer

Several weeks ago one of our girls (19 years old) was arrested for sniffing solvent at home while "taking care" of her 1 year old son. She has been facing a lot of troubles and to escape these realities in her life she chose to sniff solvent. She is now being charged for child and drug abuse. We had the opportunity to visit her last Friday. She seems very regretful for what she did and knows that she needs to pay the consequences for her actions. Since she is considered an adult (under 18 is a child) her punishment will be worse. It wouldn't be so bad if the jails here were actually correctional. Right now she is just in a tiny community jail MIXED WITH MEN!!! When we went to visit her my heart broke for her. Dianne, our new social worker was with us so she actually talked to the guard about having them mixed. It's actually illegal i think but he just said "well we separate them at night." When Diane asked her if she was alright in the jail mixed with men she just started to cry. Please pray for her. Yes, there does need to be action for what she did, however my fear is that she will be more hurt and that this will not help fix the problems she already has. Pray for her protection, her case to be worked out quickly and that she will really draw close to the Lord and know that He is our only answer to our problems. Pray also for her two children. She has a four year old daughter and a one year old boy. The little girl is already quite malnourished. They are now supposed to be taken care of by their grandma, but because she goes out to work all day she pulled her 11year old daughter out of school to take care of them. Please pray that God will give us wisdom in this situation. It is not right for an eleven year old to be pulled out of school and be the 'mother' of her niece and nephew. We are really praying for wisdom to have these children placed in a Christian orphanage until their mom is ready and capable of taking care of them.

A Second Chance

At 16 months, this little boy is the youngest of five siblings. His family lives in a squatter community behind the drop in centre, in the worst conditions we have seen yet. Their home is about 7 by 3 feet, has a dirt floor and has an open ceiling into the family above them. Their neighbors throw a lot of their garbage and human waist right beside their tiny home. We have been providing milk for this little boy because he is so malnourished. His mom is often coming to us for help because he and his siblings get sick very frequently (who wouldn't in those conditions).Last Friday when we were at the drop in centre she came to us because he had diarrhea for two weeks straight. Already malnourished, we could tell he had become very dehydrated, week, and loosing more weight. Knowing he was becoming critical and knowing that 50% of children in the Philippines die from diarrhea we brought him to Gentle Hands, which is a Christian humanitarian agency, on Saturday. We have taken children to Gentle Hands before and they have been very helpful and trustworthy. We got a text from the woman who runs Gentle Hands last night saying that she de-wormed our little boy and started him on antibiotics. She said he is very sick but hopes that he will recover from his sickness and malnourishment in about one months time. Please pray for his total recovery. Please also pray for his family. We are trying to help this family in means of livelihood but their signs of initiation and desire to change is minimal. Pray that we will have wisdom and discernment as to how we can help.

Because of Jesus

Wow! What a week! We are filled with joy and thanksgiving at what God has done through four Christmas parties this past week. First, we want to thank everyone for all their prayers and support for these events. Our first party was held in Smokey Mountain, which is an old dump site in Manila. It was a very chaotic party in the rain but the message of Jesus Christ was told clearly through a puppet show in Tagalog to 600 children and their parents. God's blessings of gift bags and groceries were received with great joy.

Saturday morning at 2am we packed a truck with gifts and games and headed to Olongapo, a city outside of Manila. In Olongapo we partnered with ten of the local churches to hold another party for 600 children and their parents. These churches are located in the poorer areas of the city. Each child again received a gift bag and each family a grocery bag. We wish you could have seen the huge smiles as the kids pulled items out of their bags one by one and showed it off to the person beside them. Kids were playing with their toys around the entire arena and my personal favourite was the 20 + boys in the middle of the arena pushing, zooming and of course crashing their Hotwheels. It was priceless.

Our favourite party was held in a tribe in Kanawan. You might remember this place as we had wrote several months ago about a dvbs we held there. Anyways, the same day as the party in Olangapo we went to Kanawan. When we arrived, there were at least 30+ men from the tribe and dozens of beautiful children that met us at the road and carried all of our 200 bags of toys & food up the mountain on a fairly steep, circuitous trail to the village. We would have never been able to get everything up there without them. Even the kids were eager to help carry our packs. We were exhausted once up there from our early morning and full day but the kids were so excited to see us. We played and talked with them for hours. That night we had a great sleep in our tent and woke up to the kids peeking in our window. The women cooked all the meals for our team in kettles over open fires. The food there always tastes so good! Sunday morning we attended the village's outgrown church. It was such a blessing. The joy of the Lord was very evident! That night we had a bonfire with the people of the village. We played games and did dance presentations (yes, even we danced....it was a team thing). Some of the kids and women from the tribe danced their traditional tribal dance. The next day (Monday) we had a party for the 200 kids (from the tribe and from the school). We again had games for the kids and presented the gospel message through a puppet show. The kids loved their gift bags, especially the sunglasses, beanie babies and Hotwheel cars! The boys were racing the cars down an incline, boys & girls were wearing their new sunglasses and placing them on the front of their heads when not in use. Aside from toys they also received flip flops and an umbrella. Of course they loved everything that was given to them. When it was time to leave, the children plus many adults helped carry all our luggage etc. back down the mountain to the road where the vehicles were waiting.
**The little girl (Esmeralda) sitting alone in the picture by the wall had just won a prize in a game. While all the other kids were still playing games she sat all alone to play with her new toy.



























Once we got home we crashed from all the traveling. Then the next day we had a fellowship with all of the partner churches of Youth Mobilization. It was a fun event and a way to just thank the churches for their support over the past year.

The next day we had the Mercy Ministry party. This year we held it at Jollibee which is a popular fast food restaurant here. This was a smaller party compared to the rest with 139 people. We played games, had a few presentations by the youth and some parents and our team leader Joshua gave a gospel presentation. After he spoke 19 people went to the front as a sign that they wanted to make Jesus Lord of their lives. A grocery bag was given to each family, a gift bag to each child and a pair of shorts and a t-shirt to each youth.










Sorry this has gotten so long. We hope you were able to get through it all. It is incredibly hard to put into words everything that God is doing here. Please pray for the people we have been able to minister to at these parties. Pray that the seeds that have been planted will be able to grow and produce good fruit.

A Box of Crayons

It was just a box of crayons. A few weeks ago, C, a girl just a couple years younger than me told me how H, her four year old daughter loves to colour. She loves to colour so much that she has warn her crayons out. All she had left was a few stubs. I knew that they didn't have the money to buy new crayons because she recently told me they have been skipping meals because they don't have enough money. The next week when I saw C, I said to her "remeber how you told me last week how H loves to colour?" She said, "ya, and H she told me again this week that she really wants to colour but she doesn't have any crayons left." I told her I have a surprise for her and I pulled out of my bag a box of 24 Crayola crayons. She was speechless. Tears trickled down her cheeks. "Really? Thank you so much!" That was all she could say. To me, it was just a box of crayons. To her and her daughter is was more than that. It was something that made their whole life colourful.
All gifts come from our loving Heavenly Father. Thank you Lord for this box of crayons!!

Article

IT Canada wrote two articles about our ministry here in their monthly Momentum newsletter. Please check them out at these links;

http://www.iteams.ca/momentum/05-momentum1.php

http://www.iteams.ca/momentum/04-momentum2.php

Revenge & Forgivness

Yesterday began as a normal ministry day at the mercy ministry drop in centre. We have 2 short termer individuals from Canada serving with our team so yesterday we took them to a squatter community to visit three of the families that attend the ministry. One of these homes was that of Bibe (Christopher). Bibe is the youth who is featured in the IT Canada Momentum article. The link for that article is above. When we visited his home yesterday we had a good time talking with him and prayed for him and his family. We had lunch at another home with a few of the women how volunteer at the centre. We then returned to the drop in centre where the youth were eating their lunch. Greg and I went up stairs with Gila (the minsitry leaders wife) and all of a sudden we heard a bunch of commotion downstairs. We ran down stairs and saw blood gushing from Eric's (one of the youth) face and John (the ministry leader) had Bibe pinned in the corner. Out of anger Bibe took a rock and hit Eric in the face right beside his eye three times. I took Eric upstairs and cleaned up his eye and Greg helped keep everything under control. We later took Eric to the hospital to get four stitches. When the youth arrived earlier that day John sensed and suspected that a fight might break out (Bibe, the leader, was with us at the time of the talk). He had a big talk with the youth and they decided they wouldn't fight. There are two different "gangs" that are from two different areas that we minister to and nothing like this has ever happened before. Fortunately when Bibe lashed out his gang members didn't fight with him but actually tried to hold him back. It was upsetting at first that this happened at the centre because it is suppose to be a place of safety for everyone but it really is a blessing that it happened here. If this would have happened on the street there may have been no one to stop them from fighting. Bibe actually had a knife with him but he didn't use it. The reason Bibe did this was because two Sunday's ago Eric was with someone named Dennis at John's church. This Dennis guy stole Bibe and Melissa's wedding rings from their daughter (she was wearing them on a necklace). This is what revoked the anger in Bibe and this was the only way that he saw possible to repay what was done to him and his family. Bibe was improving so much and the Mercy Ministry has been mentoring him and is sending him to school for a Cellphone Repair Technician course. Controlling his anger is one thing that Bibe has been praying for. The scars of life go so deep in these guys and it is going to take a lot of discipling and a lot of teaching them what it means to be Christlike to change them. After a long day, prayer, and reconciliation, Bibe apologized to Eric and Eric's mom. Our prayer is that this will not cause any hostility between these two groups.

Please keep praying for life change in these guys. Many have come a long way but there is still a long way to go and Satan is always there ready to attack and bring them down. Yesterday was another day that confirmed to us the huge need there is for a rehabilitation camp for these youth. Pray also for the workers who are involved in this ministry especially John and Gila. Pray that God will give them continual wisdom, understanding and protection.

That was the shortened version of what happened. There are so many other details, thoughts and feelings that we would really love to share with you all but it is so incredibly hard to write.