Day 18 - Monday 19th June

Well Monday was a day spent at the CCM office, with the social workers, where we were put to good use. We headed over to the office in the morning after saying goodbye to Pastor & Mrs Tripp. It has been a truly amazing experience getting to know them and one feels like we now have a set of Christian grandparents. Pastor Tripp gave a moving morning devotion for the staff before he left which we were allowed to sit in on. In that devotion he warned against grumbling, complaining, revenge and slander and brought out of the Bible passage that instead we should love, judge fairly and build each other up. In total they have given 32 hours teaching to the people here over the last 10 days , stayed up late, and lost their voices numerous occasions and now they are in India to do more of the same. Apparently Pastor Tripp is fully booked for the next 5 years in terms of international engagements.

At the office wewere subsequently given reports to edit, lists to update and write up neatly, spreadsheets to be completed and tables to be drawn in several of their books. Becci was given the tasks of checking reports. Reports are sent out to all the sponsors of the children, on their progress, if there are problems and if they are dropped from the program for some reason. They like to have people from the countries in question (US, UK and Australia) to check them for the right vocabularly, sentance structure and grammer. There are slight differences which they really want to get right. The tasks took us up to lunchtime and we shared lunch with the staff. There are 10 CCM staff that work in this office though they are not all in at once. Our tasks continued into the evening with a short break for ice cream as it was one of the girls birthdays. She was 23 and its the tradition in the Philippines that the birthday person brings in food to share. One of the older girls brought Becci & myself back to the children's homes via a jeepney. Again it was jammed packed and blasting out Michael Jackson and horrible fumes at the same time. I ended up with a live chicken sitting at my feet in a box which was amusing.

As soon as we got back we had to bolt down our dinner before it was finally time for me to do my first devotion for the children. This devotion has been put off for different reasons for a week or so and now unfortunately i only had about half an hour to collect my thoughts and calm myself before I had to begin. We sang 'wide wide as the ocean with them again' and then i explained the parable of the lost son to them (with the help of visuals Becci had drawn me) and then made a few simple points about it. I ended with prayer and then the children sang the welcome song to three new visitors that arrived today from the US. Their names are Abigail & Amelia Spinney and their friend Jennifer. They are all 17-18 years old and its their first time abroad. They arrived last week but had to wait for Pastor & Mrs Tripp to leave before there was room at the homes for them. So now we have them as neighbours which will be interesting as 5 girls vie for the bathroom in the morning. But it will all work out well I'm sure. We have been moved into the Tripps room at their request, since it has air conditioning and they said they wanted us to experience it a bit before we left. So after the devotion we retreated back to a very cool room and called it a night. All in all, a good and profitable day.

God Bless. Love Sarah