from blog-shy Jen and Leta - both doing well!!

Hello for the first time! I call this 'The land of Smiles' Everyone smiles whether it is the children who live on the streets, the shopkeeper, the children in the home, the fsmilies who live on the rubbish, everyone has a smile! Wonderful!
I am known by the children in Kanlugan and Laguna centre as Lola Leta (I can hear the laughter now) Lola means grandmother......Great respect is paid to older persons here and everytime we go out, a young man from the Kaloogan Centre looks after me - helps me off the escalator in the stores, takes me across the busy roads, and helps me down from the bus. All very nice.
Well Inge, before we set off, you prayed that I would have a taste of heaven and I have had that.
On Tuesday, we were treated to the most wonderful worship time with the children at Laguna Centre. I have never witnessed worship like it in my life Children from 8yrs-15 years whose lives have been marred and scarred by every form of abuse imaginable standing there just lost in worship! It's wonderful to see God transforming lives through the love of the people who work there it is truly miraculous! I was too choked to sing! Then 3 children sat round with each member of the team and prayed for us. Even though they prayed in their own language you didn't need to know what they were saying - you just knew thet God heard their heart requests.
So humbling and so uplifting!! One just marvels at the miraculous here in the change which is taking place in the lives of the children in these homes - prayer and the love of Jesus is at the heart of everything, and it is love that wins through in the end.
Monday, Tuesday and this morning were tough times!
Seeing children and whole families living on a gigantic rubbish dump which spread over acres.
I never thought I would live to witness such deprivation and abject poverty - the enormity of it is overwhelming find it hard to see that on the one hand and the great oppulence on the other
the gap is truly enormous...
we have seen small children as young as 5/6 sleeping on bits of cardboard or inside plastic piping, people whose homes are cardboard to lie on and an umbrella to shelter under!

We were invited by a lady to come into her home which was one room made from wood and corrugated iron 6ft by 6ft in which a family of 7 lived, ate slept and cooked. We prayed with her before we left as she was afraid that soon her house was to be bulldozed and she didn't know where she was going to go!


This morning was quite difficult when we went to a children's rescue centre and a centre for children who had been taken off the streets for a short time, only to be returned to the streets a week later! Doesn't make sense. Visited a centre for young boys who had committed crimes - like something out of a Dickens novel, but much worse - 20/25 young men and boys in a cell with nothing to do. Even they had a smile and loved to shake us by the hand....
Last night was great. Some of the street boys came to a park and did some break-dancing - they were amazing-double somersaults, balancing acts and any amount of gymnastic acheivements - all performed on hard concrete! No such thing as crash mats or spring boards, they were absolutely brilliant. After they had finished, they went 'home' to sleep somewhere on the streets!
THis week has been such a mixture of emotions - great heartache, deep sadness, anger at the injustice of things, feelings of helplessness and somewhat bewildered! But
there have been feelings of joy and delight, excitement, peace and love and seeing God at work in the lives of so many children - that what might seem impossible in the world eyes has been made possible when God is brought into the equation! Alleluia! We continue to thank God for the work done in Hid name and my prayer is that Christians can be in places of authority and decision making that there is compassion in the way government works in Manila.
Thanks for all the prayers and support - it means so much God bless you all back home
from Lola Leta with love