Philippines *Day 6*

Today I finally visited He Cares. It was great to hear about someone that was sluffing off big marketting campaigns and fundraising drives. Instead he is living by faith and really believing that if God is going to provide for the organization and the needs of the street children then God is going to place on someone's heart to do what other people trust marketting to do.

I agree with him. If there is a God that is able to do everything and anything, then He doesn't need professional brochures, advertising campaigns and large corporate smoozing efforts in order to make it all work. So far Joe Dean has been correct. And I'll bet that he will continue to be correct. They are going on year number ten now and everything has always been provided for year after year. And more than that they have 'grown'.

Not only does he and the others in the organization provide food to the street children, but there is also medical care, medicines, volunteers to go through the extra checking to make best efforts in assuring the street kids aren't selling the medices, etc etc. There is so much wonderful work being done there. I will start tomorow to go outside the city to Montalban Rizal where there are over one hundred and sixty houses of previously poor urban dwellers.

Fifty of those homes are full of people that used to be He Cares families. I am even more excited at the chance to help these families by helping them to beautify the very very basic facilities they were given in the rural area of Montalban. Several people have had it put upon their hearts to donate the materials that are needed to add additional beauty and functional features to these homes.

At first I was hesitant at the idea because I didn't feel like I was led here to the Philippines to 'beautify' someone's home. But now that I have looked at some of the pictures (I wish I could show them to you) I can see now how very much needed it is. It's not just making a house look nicer. It's actually more like making a hole actually look like a home. These places seem to be it really rough looking shape. It looks like the government just said "ok, we want to get these guys out of the city. I know, we''ll put up four sheets of plywood on a frame and tell them they can live in the country all for free". Only problem is, bare plywood starts to really rot after a couple of short years.

As far as the poverty line goes I don't know about the measurements. All I can say is I walked over a very dirty seven or eight year kid as I walked into the MRT station this afternoon. Hundreds of people were walking around him as they stepped into the rail transit station. With all of the noise the kid had to have been drugged up some how; either on Rugby or drugged by a Syndicate for reasons I can't remember at the moment. Rugby is a rubber cement that the kids sniff which help them get so high they forget about the hunger pains in the stomach. I feel very sad as I reflect on this. I really don't know what to do about it yet, but I am sure I will figure it out soon.