I have made it to the Philippines! This is my first time in Asia and I really love it! The people here are so polite, they all call me ma’am, which I love obviously, only it is funny because with their accents it sounds like mom. haha.
Basketball is huge here, I have played everyday since I made it here a week and a half ago! It is so awesome. The humidity here is out of control! I never thought I would be so bothered by it because I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, but let me tell y’all the south has nothing on the Philippines, Ive never sweat so much in my life and it isn’t even hot! I love it, but I will love it more when we have a pool.
A few mornings a week we are working on the pool here at the girls home we live at. I hope to have it all fixed up before we leave so we will have somewhere to swim! The girls home we live at is awesome. It is called the JAZ home. Short for Josie’s Angels Zone. Josie (a 23 yr old American who grew up in the Philippines) runs it and there are 35 girls under her care in this dorm style house. My team lives here along with another all girls team in our own little dorm style apartment downstairs. It is awesome living here being able to hang out and do bible studies with all the girls who live here (ages 9-19). Also I love the independence living downstairs gives us.
When we are not working here at the Jaz home we are out in the nearby squatter villages making relationships with the people in this community. It has not always been easy going there to ministry but the Lord has really been showing me that he is the one at work, not myself. So I consider it a great privilege to go there every day for the next three months and watch God completely transform that village. And that is my prayer, that at the end of these three months there would be a transformation only credible to the Lord.
I have quickly fallen in love with the Philippines and I ask you all to pray for this country. As I’m sure you know they have been hit with the largest typhoon in the history of the world. Pray for the islands that have been wiped clean, pray for the people who are still missing. Pray that the light would outshine the evil and that the human trafficking would end.
