Swimming Outing!!!

This month is crazy busy for the whole team! Last Saturday was the only free Saturday because a 'mass wedding' had been canceled. We have been doing our new ministry for a while now, and we needed to do something fun. So we decided to take the youth swimming.

Everyone moved on short notice, but in the end we pulled it all together. This picture is of us waiting for the guys to arrive at my house ... Filipinos are not that good at the "time" thing. Since everything was short notice, we had a few youth cancel, and it made the trip and all guy experience, which was kinda nice for me because I get along with the guys easier. This made for a very interesting adventure!

We were planning on renting a big jeepny to get us all there, but with the smaller group, our friend who owns a small jeepny said he would drive. This way, we only had to pay for gas, so we took the chance...oops. The jeepny was really a big 'piece-of-junk', but hey, most are, it does not matter if they use them for public use, or private.

I knew it was going to be a long and uncomfortable ride. As you can see in the picture, we were packed in tight, and this is what it looks like even when you use them for public transport. So we were on our way and driving, and I think I was the only one who found it extremely funny that we sat in the middle lane, on a super highway, did half the speed limit and made every car around us, swerve so that they could speed up to the limit.

Everything was going great until we started seeing smoke coming off the hood of the jeepny. We got onto the shoulder and started trying to fix it.

In the Philippines the shoulder is another lane, so we had some youth waving cars away. Our spirits were high, and we all were looking forward to swimming, so we were not about to let this bring us down. After we figured out there was no chance at all to fix the jeepny, we got together, and started pushing, to an off-ramp somewhere.

We really did not push long until a tow truck showed up. We did some talking, and they told us that they were taking us to a impound lot ... hmm, this was not part of the plan. I could not stop laughing and smiling because I could not wait to email all this home and give everyone a good laugh, so nothing was going to bring me down.

After spending some time in the impound lot, we figured out a plan, and we were going to keep going. We had all of our food, bags, and everything else with us, plus our dog, so it made riding public very fun. As we made it into a town, and rented another jeepny to take us right to the pool.

We were finally there, it was 10:00 when we arrived, but we knew there would not be much sleeping going, so we did not care. We started cooking right away because we all were so hungry, and we had a feast! We did not eat everything in one sitting, but the constant snacking all night made all the food disappear.

After we ate, we brought everyone together, and did a small devotion. It was great, the youth were open, and listening, were respectful, and Jason gave a good devotion. The idea with this trip was totally fun, so we did not push too hard — we just talked with the youth about what is going on in their lives.

Things were great, I could not have been happier with the opportunities to talk about life.

This picture is all of us, after the first of many swimming sessions.

This are pictures of some of the fish and chicken we ate, and all of getting ready to swim. We did all of eating with our hands, which is a lot better, cause when you are hungry as you can really "shovel"!

Here is some fun in the pool!

I questioned myself whether I should put these photos on, but it was just boys being boys. This is J.R he was the first to fall asleep, and as you can see he got his punishment. They are using coal from the old fires to wipe on his face. I did not know what to do, "should I stop him or not" was constantly going through my mind, but I was laughing so hard I could not think straight. The kid was sleeping literally like a rock, he would not wake up! When he woke up we all had a good laugh and he was a good sport!

Here are some random pictures from the weekend, even Alfonzo (our dog) got to come!

We ran out of plates, so J.R just to used a bag.

More to come ... stay tuned!

New member of the house

Alfonzo's first bath -- in our outside sink

The other day I received a text message from Jason asking me if I wanted to buy a dog. I said 'no way' because I pictured what most dogs look like here, which are ugly small things that look like the runt of group.

I was coming home from the dump site in Cavite, and the bus is like a hour and a half, and the way buses drive here, it makes you so tired because you have to deal with the craziest drivers, who all have lead feet.

I came home and there was a dog in my apartment. I was a little confused but after i saw it, I just had to have it. My whole life my parents never let me have a dog, so when I saw a dog in my house, and remember that my parents are on the other side of the world, all these rebellious feelings came on from never being able to have one, so I bought it for 10 Canadian dollars.

His name is Alfonzo, and I named him personally (if you could not tell). He is great to have because all the street gang youth love to pet him and such. I have never had a dog, and I like having one now, but the dumb thing loves to pee in the apartment! So he now sleeps outside!

The Street Gang Ministry

We are now into our third week of the street gangs’ ministry. It is exciting but very challenging for me because of the lack of English that the gangs know. However, what is funny is that because of that we can talk about anything, pretty much, weather it be related to God or not, and they have no idea.

What was going on before was that we would go and get the youth from the area where they would be doing "standby." After the second week of living in the apartment in their area they just showed up, right next our place.

To be honest this is great but, having people constantly, show up is emotionally frustrating, and I am sure everyone has experiences with that.

As of now, we are planning to rent a pool and go for an outing with the youth. We will probably take a max of 10 kids, plus the 3 of us, and maybe some friends, so we will have probably 15ish people.

We have spent night after night just being with them and building trust, I can see it already, and I am very excited. I am building relationships regardless of the fact that we have a lot of trouble understanding each other.