Last Friday I attended an ACTION sponsored Christmas party for about 35 hard core street kids. It was a joy to watch the kids have a fun time play parlor games, sing Christmas carols (they love to sing!), eat lots of good food and open their gifts. For a few hours I think they felt special and loved. The students from the nearby Manila Bible Seminary (MBS) who minister to these kids 3x per week also had a good time and they're learning what it means to love the "unlovely". The staff and guys from Restorer’s of the Walls also participated.
One activity was to draw by groups of 4-5 kids lead by a worker. The kids' drawings were very revealing about how they view life as a street child at Christmas time. Each drawing showed kids with their close-knit families, all kinds of special food, homes decorated with bright lights, Christmas trees with many gifts under them and busy shopping malls (especially the Shoemart Mall near their hang-out) and a symbol of some sort depicting the birth of Jesus. One drawing, however, had all of this but with the kids on the outside looking in from a street corner. When asked about this the group said they're outside the festivities. This is sad but true, however, no one is outside the love of Jesus!
Some good news--a few young kids have been reconciled with their families and are now with them. Another teenage boy is returning to his family in Mindanao after living on the streets for over 10 years. He's being escorted home by a MBS student when he goes home for the holidays so we are seeing God work in the lives of these kids.
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