A glimpse.

Aaah! There's so much to update you guys on! Every day has been fun, busy, hot, exciting. Each day is a learning experience - times full of joy, times of witnessing tragedy. I am trying to take in everything. My days have mostly been filled with helping out at the shelter. Marlys (Paul's wife) has been taking me around the city to see a few things and to run some errands (no Walmarts to stop at...) for stuff for the new house (opening soon!!). It's helped me gain a little perspective. It's taken me awhile to get acclimated here. Things are so different from what I'm used to seeing. In the afternoons, once the kids are out of school, I hang out with them. They play together in the quad area between the houses - soccer, table tennis, rollerblading, swinging, babies learning to walk, lots of laughing. I've been learning some of their games - banana split is one of my favorites. Try to picture a crazy version of rock, paper, scissors...it involves spreading your feet - you eventually win the game when the other person can no longer stretch any further...the kids have an advantage being that they are soooo flexible....but I'm bigger!

Yesterday we went to one of the homes that four of the kids are from. We were checking in on the mother who has 10 children, some still at home. I use the word home because house would not be appropriate. We weaved our way through a maze of hut after hut, little square plots built up with scraps of metal and cardboard and cement. Lines of laundry hung all around. Water ran through the paths as it was raining that day. As we walked by some huts I could hear TVs, music, people cooking, babies crying, roosters crowing (they train them to fight). The smell was unidentifiable - basically the smells of so many people living so close together...often almost unbearable smells. We stepped into this mother's home (the father is nowhere to be found) and she reached for mine and Marlys' hand to lift them to her forehead - a sign of respect. As we talked with the mother (well, I listened mostly, I don't speak Cebuano) I observed children and the hut. A shy four-year-old clinging tightly to her mom, a fourteen-year-old boy watching TV, a sixteen-year-old daughter who is four months pregnant. A mouse ran down the wall - I had to bite my lip to keep myself from running. Clothes strung up on a wire to dry, or maybe that is their permanent spot. Cement floors, wood and metal walls. A sense of safety and warmth nowhere to be found. As I said, four of the children are living at the shelter - thriving, getting food, and education, learning to love the Lord. A stark contrast from the hut in a sea of huts.

I left there with the weight of trying to understand my life, our lives, in relation to theirs. Why is it this way? What do I do about it? How comfortable am I going to feel tonight as I lay my head on a soft pillow in an air conditioned room? The Lord and I are still conversing about these questions. I probably will be chewing on them for the rest of my life.

More to follow soon. There's a day waiting to be seized!

Oh, and for my Birthing Care followers...soon to come is commentary on a birthing center I toured yesterday!!!