The Days of the Philippines

It's been about two weeks since I last blogged, so I thought I might let all you dedicated followers what's up in my life. My team was given a morning and afternoon ministry, originally planned for two weeks then we would switch. But going into the third we have not changed, because most everyone wanted to go deeper into the ministry we were given. In the morning my team goes to a squatter community with about 100 sheet metal shack homes called lower manganahan (spelt phonetically not correctly). We spend time with two families and a lot of kids. One of the families mother is paralyzed from the waist down, and she has six kids and her husband tries to find work and take care of her. We spend time with her and play with the kids. It's a sad situation and I think our contact here and we are trying to raise money for her to visit the doctor. The other family we visit is a husband and wife who are not as poor but live there to save money. We spend time with her mainly and make frozen ice candy in a bag and she cooks us bananas and stuff. It's very nice food and it's a happy time. There is also half a basketball court (because B-ball is the king sport here) where we play with kids ages 0-18. They all come out and the little one want you to lift them up to the sky then back down to Earth. Then we come back to our condo rooms for lunch and a rest. It's a nice place and the head guy, Jeff Long, of Kids International Ministries lives on the basement floor, and so do the guys. The girls live up on the 4th floor. The all girl teams live at nearby children's homes and girls homes. I personally like living here with all twelve of us guys cause it gives us a great opportunity to grow closer to each other and encourage each other toward God. We have nightly devotions with all of us and it's such a cool thing to do. Anyway for our after rest we walk to the children's home that one of the all girl teams lives at. (Both our ministries are a mile away and we walk or sometimes hitch-hike) We play with more kids and my leader Chris and I have a cool position of being a role model to the older boys there because they don't have a lot of men in their lives that influence them. And this next week Chris and I have the opportunity to live there for a week. Most my time there I spend with the boys playing a lot of basketball and taking them swimming and just talking and hanging out. A lot of the Philippinos can speak English and most of them are Christian. Every now and then I see random citizens reading their bibles or praying. The Philippines are great. Their slogan is " It's more fun in the Philippines" and it's quite true. Have a nice winter solstice soon. 
Random thought of the week: If you'd like to help the disaster relief in the Philippines I have a fundraiser going on that anyone can donate to. Here's the link:

http://www.stayclassy.org/fundraise?fcid=290427