Friday, November 24, 2006

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!

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

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.