To God Give The Glory

This past week John and I started actual Tagalog lessons, we couldn't start earlier because the school didn't have any opening and we were to busy putting on the maximum amount of Christmas parties. The school is really unique in the way they are a Christian language school almost entirly made up of missionaries as their students.
The YM team here hosted a team from California and they put on a seminar on for us on Wednesday where they talked about studying your bible and discipleship. It was very well done and very informative. It was also really cool to hang out with some westerners even if they are from the the states (just kidding americans are great people) They were really awesome people and great to get to know them even if it was just for a couple of days. My strange sense of humour also got me into trouble again. When i was introducing myself to the team for some reason i looked over to John and Brett and said i was from the same small town as those 'crakers' over there. I got a lot of weird looks from the people in the room, but i just told them i could use that term because i am white and i'm taking it back and everyone seems to be ok with that. now the filipinos on our team are calling me cracker.
There have been a couple of changes to our ministries, the daycare we were running out of our church have become more of a kindergarten class now. we had to cut the size down but now we are actually getting some lessons in and teaching the kids some real education. John is in charge of it, this past april he just graduated from teachers college. the kids who come to the daycare are kids who are not in school and can't afford to go. Hopefully this is just a start to something really big in the future...The other change is a little more depressing. The street dwellers that i go and hangout with on tuesdays and thursdays at the drop-in centre had to move where they were haning out. They were hanging out just in front of a mall and used the over hang as shelter but a few weeks back one of them got in a little sqirmish with the guard. the guard pistolwhipped him in the head which gave him a nice gash. so now they are hanging out at a place where a fast food joint throws it's garbage. The way they survive is by eating the leftovers they find and collecting the plastic waste to sell.
I've got some better news about youth. Instead of them coming to the church we decided to go to them and there was about 25 youth there, all we did was play some games in the steet but it was a good fellowship. Also on wednesday some of our church members have started a bible study and about 30 kids showed up this last week. Although some of the kids dont quite get the message of jesus yet we are trying our best to spread the gospel. These things do sound nice but it definitely isn't easy, there have been some bumps and will continue to be bumps along the way. It's very difficult to think of things to do with some many kids in a limited space. It's not like back home for me, it's the city here with very very limited space and no churches with gyms, no church members with vechile to drive us places. also i can't speak tagalog so everything has to be translated and i feel a little ineffective at times. But like my friend Joeie pointed out that all this doesn't matter to God, he can do what looks impossible for us humans. He just asks us to believe and do what He tells us to do and He will do the rest. (she says it much better, look at the comments from my last post)
On sunday we had a better showing and the sunday school doubled in size. I had about 20 kids from ages 4-10 which was a little difficult to control at times even with 2 others helping me. I think that is all. Thank you so much for all your prayers. May God Bless each and everyone of you richly.

Jared

2010? We must be living in the future now

Hello Everyone.

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. My Christmas was good but definitely different. On Christmas Eve we got invited to sing kareoke at our neighbours and we did that few a while, which was totally awesome. Then after that whole YM team and some friends got together at our team leader's house and had big meal together. Then on Christmas Day John and I were invited to a team members house for the afternoon and some of their family was there also.

Then on the 26th John and I got a chance to go to the beach for the week and that very very nice. Really got to rest and relax. It's always great to get out of the city especially for a country boy like me. We even got to go for a nice hike in the jungle and saw some monkey's which was wicked sweet. So we were there for New Years and we went to where the people gathered and they put on an amazing 30 min fireworks show. Although once we got back we were told was dinky compared to what happened here in Manila. They said the fireworks here in the city were going on for an hour and a half in every direction, just abosulte choas.

Then once we got back to the City it was meetings meetings and more meetings. We had meeting for our Church to figure out our driection and our ministries for the year. Also meetings for our YM team and our plans for the coming year. We really feel God is going to do big things in our community and through paternships this year. We just need to need to humble ourselves and totally summit ourselves before God in order for there to be change. Because without God we are nothing. On top of my youth leader role I have become the Sunday School teacher, it's only between 5-10 children each week but I always need a translator because my tagalog in still really poor. We had our first youth get together on saturday, it was a pretty poor showing (and so was our Church service on Sunday) which can get frustrating but I'm trying my best not to get defeated and just power through. Just keep praying for God to change the Hearts of the kids and Church attenders. If you have any questions or commets please feel free to do so.

Take Care and God Bless

Jared