Cervantes children update

We've reached a critical stage of providing the Cervantes kids long-time care. Bryan (17 years old) attended our Honest Hands boot camp two weeks ago so we're waiting to find out if he'll be accepted into their next 10 month class starting either the 18th or 25th. Bryan is very small for his age due to being malnourished most of his life and may be too small and weak for Honest Hands' program for rough and tumble former hard-core street boys. He's also too old to enter an orphanage so if he doesn't get into Honest Hands perhaps we can work out an arrangement with a couple other partner ministries which have vocational training and discipleship combined but Bryan is a weak reader and has never learned to study so he needs Honest Hands' life skills program to develop literacy skills, gain physical strength and learn basic life disciplines. Then I think he'd be ready for vocational training and advanced discipleship. Pray about this please.

The other Cervantes siblings (Noelyn 16, Noel 10, Louie Jay 11, and Kimberly 4) may be admitted in Christian Compassion Ministries' orphanage and there's a case conference going on as I write this entry. Pray they're all admitted.

It has been a long haul with these kids. We first met Louie Jay (Luigi) when he was 2 and just about dead from malnutrition. The kids and their mom Rosemarie were living under the Tutuban Bridge in Tondo abandoned by their father. In '04 Rosemarie died from TB and the kids were taken in by their feeble grandparents but they were out of school, lacking food, roaming the streets and working in the market for food.

About 7 months ago we made contact again with the grandparents and talked with the father again about giving up his parental rights to his kids since he wasn't providing for them and this time he agreed. Since then ACTION in partnership Providence Baptist Church has been providing tutorial classes, medical care and food 3x daily for all the kids and they're growing intellectually, physically, spiritually and stabilizing emotionally.

Pray please for God's will to be done on behalf of these kids. I praise the Lord for the many people who have prayed and sacrificed much to help the Cervantes orphans.

Micah 6:8 and James 1:27 are twin verses.

For Christ on behalf of the weak,

Jeff