Our little corner of the world

The ministry here has many different pockets.  Each morning there is a sports ministry on the beach.  Our boys love taking part in the early morning activity.  The first sport 'camp' starts at about 6:30, another one follows at 9:30.

My men killing a monster spider in the bathroom.

Our temporary room at the Jungle Barn.  We have been looking for a home to rent for the next 10 months to a year.  I had hoped for something native but on this island you either get European or more native than we want.  The native huts have no toilet, folks just do it in the woods.  And the garbage is really nasty.  On the other island we'll be working on, Panay, the native housing is more what I had in mind.  Each hut has a fenced area around it so your livestock stay under and around your hut, there is some way of dealing with pooh and such, there is a well for drawing clean water. 

So it looks like we'll be renting a house on Boracay for now and possibly move to Panay next year. 

Yesterday we took a boat over to Panay, then a trike to the Ati village at the Carla site.  3 days a week the ministry feeds the kids there, loves on them, doctors them up best that we can, and tells them that God loves them - they matter.  We are building a school on this site that will eventually have k-6, and if that goes well, another one through highschool.  The Ati kids are allowed legally to attend the local Filipino school, but they are shunned, not given supplies, bullied...so most simply do not go to school.  The Ati are the lowest people on the pecking order here.  They are called negro. 

Can you imagine what impact, what an eye opening thing to have our family in their midst?  around the island?  in other communities? Filipinos assume that our three Ethiopian boys are Ati, they can't imagine why we would care for negro kids.  I think God has a great plan for using our family here.