All 4 Jesus

First week of A4J was today!! For those who don’t know, A4J is a weekly (every Sunday for 11 weeks) outreach program to the local squatter children. It includes a story and song time (in Tagalog), activity time, and then a game time.

In the first week we hand out t-shirts that say A4J, which is their ticket for admittance in the following weeks. This helps us cap the number of kids that come to 450. There are usually more kids that come than the 450, but that’s the most we can take. In fact, sometimes brothers will share one t-shirt, taking turns coming to A4J.

By 6:30am, when we drove by, a couple hundred kids were pressed against the gate, waiting to come in. We started letting them in at 7am, 5 at a time (in age groups). We would mark their hand with a marker based on age, then usher them to a table to get a t-shirt.

I was helping the Kinder age kids put on t-shirts. It was a little frustrating for me to keep the kids corralled, since I couldn’t speak Tagalog. I needed the phrase, “Stay here” or “Come back!” As I was helping them into shirts, I was also trying to keep them near me until 5 would be ready to walk up the steps. But the kids instinctively would race up the hill as soon as they got their shirts on. A couple of times a kid would bolt before I would notice or could catch him.

At the end it was very chaotic. Once we got into our groups, we had 10 min. left. We spend that time learning their names, then learning a song in Tagalog.

To see more pictures, follow this link: http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2014226&l=c05a8&id=162800020

God Bless,

Betsy

I’ve survived the first 4 weeks of school pretty well. I wanted to let you all know that I will be sending out a newsletter sometime in October – so you may look forward to that.

I have begun Tagalog lessons and now know how to greet someone – based on the time of day. There is Magandang umaga (Good morning), Magandang tanghali (Good lunch), Magandang hapon (Good afternoon) and Magandang gabi (Good evening). I’ve been working on pronunciation and glottal stops. Since the Filipinos are not used to hearing their language spoken by a non-Filipino, we have to learn pronunciation carefully, otherwise they won’t understand us.

This last weekend Faith Academy had a Community

picnic. I sat with a couple of families of my students.

All 4 Jesus, the squatter kids ministry has not started yet, but it will be starting this coming Sunday. I will put more photos and information up about that when I have the chance.

Well, there is a huge storm coming up – I better get off the computer now! God bless,

Betsy