I know it's been a while since I've posted on here, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things. I want to catch you up on this semester:)
One of our student's parents has an orphanage. They take in types of people and a lot of times, they get babies such as this one. A friend was taking her for the weekend to get her out of the orphanage. She is very premature and had no name. It broke my heart to hold her. This family does such incredible work. The mom is a ferocious lover of children. Two girls were brought to the orphanage because they were sexually abused by their father. The lady went to the neighborhood looking for the girls' family. She didn't say that she knew the girls were raped but just was looking for them. The girls had described what the inside of the house looked like. The mom managed to find someone who knew the parents. She led them to a crack in the wall. The orphanage owner (and a few other people with her) followed the lady into the crack to a hidden house. Inside the house, she found tons of gambling and other illegal activities going on. She noticed the things the girls' mentioned inside the house. Turns out the dad is a notorious drug Lord and everyone is afraid of him. She was able to get the information she needed to report him to the police. Pray for justice for these girls and for this orphanage ministry, which needs to remain unnamed.
This year, we unveiled a house system in high school. If you've seen Harry Potter, they use a house system and while ours looks very different, it's a similar idea. Instead of everything being about grades, we have horizontal teared groups. Please pray as this has been a huge transition and a point of contention for some. Please pray for unity as we move forward.
High school retreat is one of the first things we do as a high school and it is a great chance to escape Manila and bond. What a blast these kids are. I am blessed by why I do. On the top right is my TA, Karis. She is a senior and if you are my facebook or instagram friend, you've seen her appear many many times in videos and pictures. She keeps me in stitches and she's a wonderful person.
The grade 12 literature class was studying the Holocaust and Jewish oppression, so they had "Jew For A Day" day. Basically the kids who were labeled as Jews from that class had special rules for them. They couldn't wear socks. They could only use one set of bathrooms in the entire campus. They couldn't shower after PE. They couldn't speak unless spoken to. They had to do anything any non-Jew told them to do. The list kept going, but that's the basics. It was simply an illustration of what it may have been like to be a Jew during the war. It was definitely an interesting thing to watch and be a part of. Some kids were kind and let them off easy and some kids got full into character and were cruel. Jews were carrying backpacks for other kids, fetching their lunch, and filling water bottles. Anyway, I do love the creativity of our teachers who will go the extra mile to help students think outside the box and be deep thinkers.
I began the year helping with A4J (All For Jesus), which is similar to VBS and runs every Sunday morning for an hour and half. It runs all through the fall semester and is an outreach program to the squatter community around Faith. The very first day is a registration day, which simply means the kids are given a shirt for the program and that is there ticket in the campus gates every sunday. We had four hundred shirts and gave away all of them. We had to turn away another 20 or so kids. I have been helping with game time for this program since the beginning of the semester and had to step down for the final three weeks as rugby season is starting up and I was becoming overwhelmed. You can pray for these kids and their families. Pray that the gospel made it's way into each home and for them to attend the church that is on campus for the squatter community.