Camp & relief ops: "But God"

We had 47 rough and tumble street kids (41 boys, 6 girls) at our camp this week and many workers new to this type of ministry. The kids had a great time learning about Jesus via Child Evangelism Fellowships "Wordless Book", praying team building games, sleeping in clean comfortable beds, eating lots of good food, making new friends, swimming and getting their wounds, infections, coughs and colds cleaned and treated by loving nurses and a doctor. I found it difficult to focus on the kids and workers though because I was also pounding away developing our quake-typhoon relief op plans for the Visayas region. Three participating small churches really blessed us because they gave us offerings for our relief ops of $107, $11 and $9. They were apologetic about how small they were but we expressed our gratefulness to each church for their heartfelt generosity and prayers. I was also encouraged by having British, German and American single women and a young American couple serve with us along many young Filipinos. Now that camp is over the long haul ministry of followup has begun so pray about this because we want each child to know Christ, experience a new life in Him, get connected to a loving church and get off the streets.

I say this after every street kids camp--I think these battered kids have hallow legs. After our fiesta Thursday evening at which everyone enjoyed a large meal of rice, pancit, buko salad, chicken and soup three teenage boys came to the kitchen at 9:30 looking for more food because they were still hungry. I sat with them and watched each of them wolf down a plate of leftover rice, chicken and pancit. One boy told me he's never had a meal like this and this was the first time he slept in a bed. He also told me he doesn't know his parents or their whereabouts. 

Our relief plans are coming together by the grace of God and the help of many good people so we're gaining traction and synergy. Lord willing we'll go to Bohol next week to do relief work and look into what else we can do to assist pastors, churches and their neighbors there. We don't want to leave them behind with most of the news and relief activities focused on Leyte and Samar. If we can we'll go to Leyte, but not Tacloban City, to scout out what our role can be in assisting the suffering there. As we do with each disaster we're seeing the best and the worst in people.

It's obvious something has terribly gone wrong in our world. However I'm encouraged by Ephesians 2:4 "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love…." Where would we be without Jesus Christ, loving family and faithful friends?! I shutter to think about this!