Philippines Christmas (very late!)

By now, we are figuring out that we are very bad bloggers. But, with basketball season over (we'll blog about that next) and Jess soon to be a stay at home mom, we should be able to get back away from the busyness and communicate a little more in the coming months. Not to mention, we'll be back in the States before we know it.

Over Christmas, we had the awesome opportunity to visit our friends at Kids International Ministries (KIM) in Antipolo, Philippines. We had gone over Thanksgiving as well, and we came back this time to finish some business. Part of our reason for coming was to sit down with Jeff Long, the president of KIM, and discuss plans for joining them full-time in the ministry. We worked out a rough budget, discussed support raising, and what our responsibilities/areas of opportunity are there. In the end, we came out with some numbers of what we will trust God to supply us with, and a "job position" for Russell. We plan on moving there sometime shortly after Christmas of 2010, and Russell's job will be to communicate with and organize the short-term missions groups that come in from all over the world. Right now, Jeff is doing that job along with many others, and it will be a weight off his shoulders when we get there. We will post more of those kinds of details, and talk with many of you in person, but for now, here are some pictures and details of what other things we were able to do while there over Christmas.

Step One: Buy a bunch of groceries in bulk and bring them to our friend Myles's house.

Step Two: Organize and package the groceries into 100 different bags (this took the better part of a day).

Step 3: Get a picture of all the goodies in each bag. Those little bags at the bottom are vitamins and fever medicine for adults and children. We had to separate them into these tiny little bags.. it took us like 5 hours.

Step Four: Stay up late wrapping over 500 articles of clothing to give away with the groceries.

Step Five: Invite over 100 families (plus the extra that just showed up) to Myles's roof-top ministry place for her pastor to give a short sermon. Then give away all of the goods to the hordes of people pushing and jumping line to get SOMETHING for Christmas. Lots of smiles here, and it was exhausting, but rewarding.

Steps Six-Ten: Take shifts watching the orphans at the KIM Children's Home so the Filipino staff could have a couple weeks off for Christmas.

Step Eleven- Have a fun Christmas with the kids at the Children's Home, and watch them open gifts they received from friends all over the world.

Step Twelve: Meet a family of 11 kids, a drunk abusive father, and a mother who has been pregnant for the majority of her adult life who live on the equivalent of 20$ a week. These are two of those kids. The older girl's name is Sunshine- she basically tends the rest of the children, and she's only 11. The little one is over a year old, but her body is that of a 7 or 8 month old due to malnutrition. These kids ate and bathed at the Children's Home a few times while we were there. Their mother wanted to give away 3 of them. Tell me, how could a mother choose 3?

Step Thirteen-Fourteen: Really enjoy our time at the Home, and get to know the kids well. The picture below is of a new 4 year old to the home named Danilo. He's funny. The picture below that is of the princess of the home, Angel Miles. She's so stinkin cute!

Step Fifteen: See this face from all of the kids as we tell them we're leaving. Hugs and kisses came in plenty after that. We love these kids and can't wait to be back with them!