frontline

with my right hnd i'm typng out a blog... with my left i'm scratching sampson, the first dog i've been able to pet in a loooong time! He's actually quite a distraction, when I need to be writing. Frontline has a few dogs which are safe to pet and it sounds crazy but it's such a blessing to me, especially in this time when I'm lonely for home. So there's sampson, who I just had to go yell at for knocking over a garbage can, and a mama dog named Panda and her two little puppies. They are adorable! They're three weeks old and even Dani, who dislikes animals, loves them. Especially the one she's named Chubs. And there's a few other mutts who come from outside the compound to hang around but I won't be petting those.

It is beautiful beyond words to get out of the concrete jungle that is Manila, and into the real jungle where the air is clearer and the water coming from the pipes is mountain fresh. I just realized how cheesy that sounds but I don't even care, I'm loving this. I love Manila, but this break is just wonderful.

We got picked up yesterday morning from our house in Manila and arrived at Frontline in San Pablo city in the afternoon. We hung out and relaxed for a while, then went to a cell group meeting at one of Frontline's churches. Dani and I were in the same group with some women. All the groups were digging deeper into that sunday's message, which was finding value in people. Then we had dinner at the compound, and went to bed early.

Today we woke up, had breakfast, and went to work. There's a building project right now here at Frontline, they are building a dormitory for the FTC children- the one's they've rescued off the streets. So these kids will stay and sleep in the building and attend the school they already have built and running. (I hope all this makes sense, I'm distracted and at the end of my day haha.) Dani and I painted sheet upon sheet of plywood, Nathan and Taylor poured concrete, and Jordan and Matt dug a hole in the ground by hand. It was good work, and Dani and I were lucky enough to be under the shade of a tarp overhead. The morning passed really quick. Lunch was delicious, ad then I hung out at the Pessina's house (they run the show here). I talked with Rowena Pessina for a good couple hours until I really had to go and have a shower and clean upfrom the work that morning. After that we went out to Santisimo with Pastor Roel. He lives at the church, called the Green Box church and it's situated right in the middle of rice fields pretty much on all sides. It is gorgeous out there, and so cool to finally see rice fields up close! We went around to a few different life groups, with tenish people at each one, again we discussed the value of people. Then we had dinner, and headed back to the compound.

So now it's quarter after ten and I should get to bed since we have devotions with the workers at 6 in the morning. But I don't want to forget any of this and I really needed to be blogging more. God bless, be vigilant and pray for us and for the salvation of those we come across. Tomorrow is a big outreach opportunity at Palakpasan (which I can never say right) and we're really excited to see what will happen.

love angela.

ahh the smell of urine and hot garbage...

There's definitely a distinct smell to Manila. I can't speak for the rest of the Philippines, I'm not sure if it smells like this. There's a corner right down the street from our house that reeks every time I walk by haha. And now it just makes me laugh. I guess there's a sewer hidden among the grass there or something.

We've been involved in a volleyball tournament every weekend for the last couple of weeks, and it's been really fun! I was super embarrassed to play because I'm not good at all but after like 6 games I'm not as worried lol. My team has only won once, but when we did it was by a large margin so I can be proud of that! We play at the park near the church, called 'the oval'. There's a playground and a sheltered area for community events, etc. The best part of the oval is the woman who makes halo halo, or 'mix mix'. Its a Filipino favorite, and for good reason. You can throw anything into it- corn, beans, gellatin, bananas, mango, some kind of grain or something... and then ice and she pours canned milk overtop. Oh, it's delicious. And very refreshing.

We watched the US vs Canada game today from a really sweet cafe the next city over. When I say its another city, it sounds far away, but it only takes like 5 or 6 minutes to get there by bus or jeepney. Anyway it wasn't a happy finish so I don't want to talk about it much. But it was sweet to get a taste of home all the way from Asia.

After the game I went to the mall to buy a birthday present. On the way home, the jeepney stopped at a light and a little boy came on the back with a rag in his hand and started wiping every passenger's foot. He held out his hand for coins, to which I had to shake my head no. I still feel wounded even now just relating the story. We don't have any choice, we can't give money to any kids who come to beg. There's already an expectation that we have lots of money to give, because of our white skin and we don't want to fuel that. But also, if we give money to one child, the rest will come looking for money too, and it's not a responsible thing to do for them. I know all of that, and it is right, and it is true. But my heart still breaks when I think of how soft the rag was that he wiped my foot with and how hard it was to say no to him.

There's so much of this. So many kids begging. I'm grieved by it, especially because I haven't yet found my way to help or make a difference. We had a night of encouragement at the youth service last night (sunday night.) And that was really good, we got into groups of about six and went around the circle for each person, affirming them and letting them know the ways we see God in them. It was great for me to hear so many things, and I think it was very refreshing for my soul. So that helps a lot. I know that I am making an impact on people I'm fortunate enough to be friends with, they're such beautiful people. I just feel like I'm not doing enough. I wonder if missionaries every feel like they're doing enough.

Anyway it's late and I'm exhausted. I didn't get a nap before volleyball and even though it's not totally true, I feel like I've been going hard since this morning. So goodnight, god bless, miss you and love you.

ang.

jesus said, 'let the children come...the kingdom of heaven belongs to these.'

What better way to gain appreciation for life than to cradle in your arms a baby orphan? I had the best day of my trip yesterday. We went to an orphanage called Gentle Hands which rescues and takes in abandoned, malnourished, and abused children, mostly from a squatter village nearby. www.gentlehands.typepad.com They take photos of the children when they come in for their file and when you look at pictures, then at the kids now you can hardly recognize them. We took out all the children to a park near the orphanage. A woman who lives next door pointed at a little girl Taylor was holding. She was shocked to see this little girl now, because she had seen her when she first came in. She said the girl was so skinny before, but now she has a chubby belly, praise God! Gentle Hands is an incredible place. There are so many kids there to hold and love and play with. One little boy in particular got attached to me. He would cry every time I put him down, and eventually I didn't want to put him down at all. When I did so that he could eat, as soon as he was finished he sat there on the floor and looked for me. So when he found me he came crawling over and reached up to be held. Ugh it just melted my heart! When I was holding the babies, I kept thinking how natural it felt, and how easy it was for me in those moments to show love to some really special kids. It is one thing for me to say "this child has no parents", but when I'm holding him in my arms and he lays his head down on my chest, it hits me that he has no mommy, and he has no daddy. I don't know what to think, but all I can do is just hug him and kiss him. I hope we go back soon.

We were all tired after the long day. It was the best work I've ever done, but it was draining. This morning we woke up with plans to go over to a garbage dump where people live, and kind of observe what it's like there. But after talking with our Filipino friends it turns out it's too dangerous for the team to go, partially because we're white so we stand out, but also because of Dani and I being women. It was disappointing, but it makes sense. And there wouldn't be a whole lot we could do that's beneficial anyway. So instead we went to Greenhills! We got on an airconditioned bus that took us straight there. It's a big, huge mall with some stores but mostly a ton of market stalls. I can't describe how many there are haha but basically there's a lot of stuff. I got lost a couple times in the maze of stalls and booths. I bargained for everything I bought. I got a big, beautiful pinkish pearl necklace (genuine pearls) for 400 pesos, ten dollars! It was supposed to be 800 so I was pretty pleased with myself :) You can tell if the pearls are real or not by rubbing them on your teeth. If it feels smooth, they are imitation. You want it to feel like sand against your tooth, and then you know it's real. I got a few other pearly goods and some t shirts and shorts. I was only there for a few hours but I really enjoyed myself.

So now it's 7:30 in the evening and I think I might go over to the church and see what's going on over there. Tomorrow is my fasting day (every friday) so you can keep me in your prayers! God bless, love you!

ang.

you can't enjoy those fresh baked buns without eating chicken intestine and pig liver too!

Guess who came in third place in the singing competition!? (No thanks to me!) Milet sang beautifully and I, lucky to be her partner, got to share in the winnings with her. Our prize was a box of chocolates, a little stuffed panda bear and 150 pesos each! I would have been content with just the chocolates haha. It's really really different here, not all of it tastes very good but these were lovely. I was doing well up until we had to get on the stage and then I just turned into a nervous wreck lol. It's a good thing I wore a long skirt, I don't think anyone saw my knees shaking but I'm pretty sure it was obvious that I wasn't entirely comfortable up there haha. Anyway, much to our surprise we won top three so it turned out all right in the end.

Today hasn't been incredibly eventful, but the spice of it thus far was eating liver. Oh my. It's almost 4:00 pm here and like I said, it's been a fairly lazy day. We cleaned the house this morning after breakfast and then went our separate ways, most of us to our beds. I walked over to the church to grab my toothpaste which I left there last night, and was invited to stay for lunch ("kain na!" ....'eat now!') The church puts out a free lunch mondays and wednesdays for students and any of the kids who hang around. So, according to culture, I had to sit and eat what was offered or else I would be offending everyone. I'm happy to do it for the sake of the Kingdom, but it wasn't easy by any means! I held back a gag twice lol and finally I got through it. It could be worse. Here they eat blood mixed with gelatin and fry it up. If that is ever offered to us we'll have to eat it. I will confess that I'm praying that day will never come.

A couple people on the team ate some balut, which is hard boiled goose egg. The fetus is a couple weeks old when you eat it. You break open a little hole in the top of the egg, suck out the juices (yes, the juices), then break off more of the shell and just gobble the whole thing down. Every now and then you get some crunchy bits (beak or bones), and the occasional feather (yes, feather). I dare you to look it up on wikipedia. Thank God I didn't have to eat the balut. I don't think I'll ever try it if I don't have to.

So I don't know what else I'll be up to today, probably capitalize on some time to read my bible. I'm going to make an effort to update more often, even with the boring and mundane. At least my folks will know I'm still kicking that way lol.

God bless!

happy valentines day!

Wow, it has been a long time since my last blog, sorry about that. Mom and Dad, I'm still okay! I think it's been since we moved into our house, I'm just busy doing other things.

Things are still great here, even better than before. I'm settled in and comfortable here, so much that I've been seriously thinking about coming back again for a while. But it's all in His hands, I'm not worried about what I'll end up doing. God's got it all under control, I'm kind of going along for the ride haha... He'll show me what I'm supposed to do when it's the right time.

Work at the church it going well and I'm making some really wonderful friends. As today is Valentines Day, the church is putting on a bit of a show, where anyone who wants to can grab a partner and sing a love song to God on stage :) Milet and I are going to be singing Only Hope, the song from A Walk To Remember. It's a step out of my comfort zone lol but I'm among friends so I guess I don't have to be too nervous. I'm going to head to the church in a couple hours to practice.

In the last couple weeks I got to do lots of sweet stuff. We had to go renew our passports which is done pretty far away, so after that we went as a team to Divisoria, which is a huge (HUGE) market. Maybe when we have to go back to renew yet again, we can do some more shopping. I only bought some tops. I tried to bring down a pair of shoes to 200 pesos (5ish bucks) but the woman selling them wouldn't agree haha. I should have just bought them since they were nice and really cheap, but I was just too uncomfortable lol I wanted to get out of there. It turns out I'm not a very good bargainer.

Last week Mona and I took Dani to Fresh, the salon near by. I got a foot treatment and pedicure, Dani got a hair treatment, and Mona got a haircut. It's so bizzare in this place haha. There's only two women working in there, the rest are Baclas (cross dressers.) Not only are these men wearing women's clothes, but they even have bras with fake boobs in them and they've got makeup on. Oh, it is so weird. The guy doing my foot treatment actually looked like a woman. Not a very pretty one, but a woman just the same. There's a weird spirit over a lot of men here. Outside of the church they seem to care way more than women about how they look, and you see a lot of Baclas at the mall. Most of the time I don't notice but the guys on the team pick them out pretty easily. Normally I wouldn't go and get salon treatments done, but it's so cheap here it's hard to resist. You can get 4 treatments done for only 500 pesos! That's 11 Canadian dollars! And to get my underarms waxed took like 10 minutes and only cost me 150 pesos, 3 dollars. I'm going to go back to Fresh and get a hair treatment and a facial lol. I had no idea missionaries could enjoy things like this.

Don't think we're not working though! It just happens to be very enjoyable work :) Yesterday at Super Kids I was sitting in the middle of a group of the kids listening to the story or whatever was going on (sometimes its hard to tell because the majority is in Tagalog) and I noticed this little boy behind me laying face down on the ground fast asleep! Some kids were walking around him but he was getting stepped on a little bit and I didn't like seeing the little guy sleeping on the floor like that, so I scooped him up. He was maybe 3 years old and soooo cute. He only opened his eyes for a second and looked at my face, then went right back to sleep in my arms haha. And he stayed there for the next hour and a half. I don't know HOW he slept through all the noise but he did. There's a little girl named Nicole who I held too. She's a little older, probably 4, maybe 5 years old. For the past couple weeks she had a really bad cough, so I prayed for her and this week she was way better :) her eyes were bright and she was giggling and happy.

It's hard to describe what super kids is like when your in the church with 400 kids. There's a shocking amount of violence... most of the boys are just play fighting and wrestling. But it seems like the girls get really scrappy. Dani watched one girl smack a little guy in the face with a dust pan. I saw another girl punching a smaller boy over and over in the face too. Nicole's bigger brother had to come to her defense a few times when she wandered away, because each time, some other kid would push her around or hit her. There's fighting and crying kids everywhere. It's hard to scold anyone because a lot of the time you don't catch what happened, you only see someone crying. You know what happened but what can you do if you don't see it? Not to mention that sometimes you see something happen from across the room and you can't even make your way over there to stop it. There's so many kids, sometimes it feels like a mad house in there. We know that these kids are hitting because its what they see at home. It's hard cause I know there's really not a lot I can do about it except pray and try to step in when and where its possible.

Yesterday we had our first volleyball game of a long tournament. It's a new ministry the church just started to try and get some of the unbelievers who stop by for food involved in the church community. There's a group of boys who come a couple times a week and we'd like to see them get connected with the youth.

I would also like to announce that my good friends We Are The City won the Peak Performance Project in Vancouver! The prize is 150 000 dollars and a huge amount of exposure! I'm so proud to see how far they've come since we were all 14 years old and they were kids practicing their instruments in Cayne's basement. I cried when I found out haha. I only wish I could congratulate them in person and give them all, especially Cayne and Dolby a big hug. But since I can't, maybe you can. They're touring Canada right now so go and find out when their coming to you and go see them for me. If you don't know them already, they're super personable young men, and they'd be happy to meet you. So go shake their hands and tell them Angela misses them and says hi! www.wearethecity.ca

It's almost 3 here and I gotta go grab some lunch and shower. The cold water was hard to get used to at first but now I'm loving it. The key is to shower during the day lol. If I shower first thing in the morning it's too much of a shock for my liking haha.

happy balemtimes everyone, love you!

...for i was hungry, and you fed me.

What can I say about the last couple days? Let alone the last couple weeks... There's a few things that I've come across, from day to day, that don't phase me in the moment. Its when I look back and think of what I saw that I'm hit with the reality.

For example, walking back from a mall one night, we stopped on the sidewalk to wait for a jeepney to pick us up. Just feet away, under a bench, three people were sleeping. One woman, the one I could see most clearly, was laying face down, covered by a thin scarf, spread out over her body. There were more people sleeping under a tarp, just under the bridge to our left. I'm at a loss when I try and think of anything to say about it. Just like Elie Wiesel, describing his experiences before, during, and after Auschwitz. In the book Night, he tells of what happened, not so much how he feels about it. The little that I've seen so far in Manila is hard to compare to a Holocaust, I realise that. They are too different to contrast. But I think right now, it's easier for me to describe what I see, rather than how I feel about what I see. My focus right now needs to be on my responsibility. What is my responsibility today, what can I do right now, from where I am in the world, to bring God's kingdom down to earth? I can feed a child rice. But he's still going to die eventually, from starvation or disease, or from old age when he's 80 years old. Either way, he's going to die, just like me. So if I feed him rice one saturday, and fill his belly, but never share with him the love of God, what favor have I done him? The rice will pass through his system and he'll be hungry again in a few hours. If, however, I offer him the bread of life, salvation and victory in Jesus, he will never need to be hungry again. Yes, it is GOOD to feed the children! Very good, in fact, it's commanded. (Matthew 25:35-40) But if I leave it at rice then I'm doing little for them. Anyway, thats what I've been realising lately. As Nathan always says, it's all about Jesus.

But that's a whole other post haha. Right now I have a hankering to go for a walk along these broken sidewalks and go see a lovely woman who sells me orange pop :) There's something special about a person who sells you a cold pop in this heat! Almost as much as a coffee in the middle of Edmonton's January.

Mall of Asia tomorrow afternoon, and the burned down mosque. Remember to pray for us and for God's work to be done, love to be shown, and miracles to be the cherry on top.

no time!!

I have only ten minutes to write but so much to say!

We've moved into our new house. The team leaders are getting beds and some sheets and stuff. We're going to be living simply, and I'm very excited. It's two stories, with 4 bedrooms but really three, since one of them is just a bed in a corner for a maid lol. It's sad, but funny. It looks totally pathetic to be honest, but it might make for a beautiful prayer closet. Two bathrooms, and a kitchen. I think its really lovely, in a rugged sort of way. Nothing like what we're used to back home, but thats what i love about it. I'm really learning things!

We finished reading matthew, now we're on to mark. I really liked reading it. The sermon on the mount is so encouraging. For anyone who says the bible doesn't give clear instructions, I would recommend them to read that passage. Anyways it was really good.

We're going to head downtown to the Mall of Asia on thursday now, round two. I can't think of any reason why we won't get there this time, but it's all in God's hands. Whatever he wants to happen, we're cool with! So be thinking and praying for us as we go down there. Personally, I feel that I'll be challenged in spiritual warfare while we're ministering and sharing at the burned down mosque, so please be praying. And we'll all remember that all things are possible through Christ who strengthens us. And there is no need to fear, because the victory is mine when I'm walking with Him. It's just a matter of fighting it out until he comes again :)

The people here at the church are incredible. They have such beautiful, servant hearts. I'm so blessed when I see them doing dishes, or sweeping and mopping, not because anybody asked or even brought it up, but just because it needed to be done.

love you all!

angela.