Thursday 16th - Marikina

On Thursday morning we went to visit Olandes. We are slightly confused about how these areas work but I think Olandes and Balubad are like suburbs of Marikina, and Marikina is a city, but is within the greater city of Metro Manila...."Manila" is also a city within Metro Manila, but usually when people refer to Manila they are meaning Metro Manila which contains...um...16(??) cities....I THINK that is right-ish!!!!

So we went to visit a preschool (here they call them playschools) in Olandes which is a very poor (slum) area. There were about 15 kids there, all 3 years old. SUPER cute!! very shy of us tho. They LOVED it when Merridee read a story to them, and went CRAZY over the bubbles we blew so that was pretty fun :)

Then we went to visit the child Janette sponsors, a wee girl called Vanessa who is about to turn 15. She was VERY shy but I think they enjoyed meeting each other!!! SOOO interesting seeing their house...it honestly looked like they'd found a wee gap between two other buildings, and made their wee tiny house there out of pieces of wood and tin. TINY wee house, with a downstairs (one tiny room) and upstairs (2 VERY tiny rooms up a VERY steep staircase). There wasn't enough room for all of us in there so only Janette, Liz G, and Merridee went in to visit with them. Apparently there were gigantic rats running around in the rafters right above their heads...so sad that people have to live like that :(


Anyway....after that visit we had lunch and then we presented a seminar for the women of Olandes (mostly mothers of sponsored children) called "Women of Worth". Janette gave her testimony about influential women in her life, Merridee spoke as well, about her mother, Liz B spoke about Naomi (from the book of Ruth in the bible) and then Liz G spoke about being a godly woman/the proverbs 31 woman, and the Ezer/helper aspect of woman to man. All really good, tied together really well, and got great responses from the women there. about 150 women there I think, of a very wide range of ages, and they responded really well, discussed things together in groups and then shared their own stories about influential women in their lives which was really lovely, and then at the end we had the opportunity to pray with any of them who wanted us to, which was quite a lot :) Mostly prayer for sickness, to get jobs, and for resolving family conflicts.

That was the main stuff we did yesterday!!! I'm pretty tired now and everybody else has gone to bed (even though it's only 9.20pm!!) so I will sign off for now and write about what we did today at some other time, hopefully tomorrow :)

Hope you are all well!!!

Oh yes on a more personal note because I have only been reporting factual stuff, whoops....we are all well, Liz B's eyes are back to normal finally....no other health problems...all our bowels are ringing Merridee says!!! hehehehe!! So yup, all good, very happy and well, and having a wonderful time with lots of interesting experiences. It is VERY hot and that is a wee bit of a struggle at times, but we are coping :) My hair is RIDICULOUSLY fluffy but I am also coping. Lol. We have eaten red banana sauce (looks like tomato sauce, and is savoury) and cheese flavoured ice cream (!!!) and lamb liver...that is actually the first thing I've eaten on this whole trip that I didn't like hehe. Things in the Philippines are sooo cheap, I just can't get over it. e.g. we could get a haircut here for NZ$1.50. Today I had a 30c icecream. And Becs and I went for a (hair-raising) ride on a rollercoaster in the mall that only cost 30c too....gosh it was scary lol Becs was cracking up the whole way round and I was praying that it would stay on the tracks!!!! hahahaha it didn't occur to me until I was already belted in that a rollercoaster in a MALL in the PHILIPPINES might not exactly be the safest of rides....it's not exactly DisneyLand!!

So that's about all for now :) We are thinking about you guys...chch with all your earthquakes and devastation, and the deep south with your crazy snow storms etc..hope you are all staying bundled up inside!!! Won't complain about how hot we all are!!!!
Love from all of us :)
Kirsten