Moving workshop and earthquake

This Monday and Tuesday we sponsored a workshop for churches and para-church ministries in working with street children and their families. Nineteen churches and six para-church ministries sent reps to the workshop which was full of practical, heartfelt street-level training and discussion. We realized afresh that while skills are needed to work with street kids the bottom-line is the worker must have a calling from God which leads into a sense of urgency, perseverance, patience and love because our calling will be tested over and over again. We'll now select 10 churches whom we'll mentor in this specialized ministry among street kids who wander among us each and every day.

During our lunch break Tuesday I learned of the 7.2 intensity earthquake which rocked Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor provinces at 8:12am that day. I went out immediately to find a TV to learn what happened and the news was heartbreaking!  As of today 173 were killed, 300+ injured, 20 are still missing and 3.4 million people were affected. Lots of property, agricultural and infrastructural was damaged or ruined including centuries old Catholic churches because this region (300 miles south of Manila) is the cradle of the Catholic faith in the Philippines. Since Tuesday hundreds of aftershocks of 5+ in intensity have continued with tens of thousands of jittery people now in evacuation centers. Experts said this week that if a similar quake struck Metro Manila billions of pesos worth of damage would occur with thousands killed instantly. Metro Manila lays on major fault lines so we're certainly susceptible. It's amazing the disasters that continually strike this country whether they're man-made such as fires in squatter communities and war or natural such as volcanos, earthquakes and typhoons.