These children are part of a Preschool Project run by International
Care Ministries in one of the Filipino slums we visited called Riverside.

WOW--It has been an amazing week.  (I mean, I've been in four countries...How could it be anything less than amazing??)  Anyway, I have so far spent a few days in both Hong Kong and China, and I am currently in the Philippines.  So far, the Lord's hand of favor has been all over the trip.  We've made a number of good connections with local contacts, and we've seen the Lord provide for our material needs over and over again.  Praise Him!!

Right now, I am in the Philippines with International Care Ministries (ICM).  ICM works in the slums and runs food and medicine programs through the local churches.  At the same time, they teach pastors and lay people Bible knowledge, counseling skills, worship leading skills and livelihood skills.  They are also working to rebuild some of the slums. 

Their ministry is meeting the emergency needs (food and water) of the poorest of the poor and also helping them develop the resources to move out of poverty.  At the same time, they are growing local churches and leading many people to the Lord.  They have seen 125,000+ decisions for Christ in the last seven years, and the majority of those have been one-on-one conversations, not mass evangelism.  God is doing an awesome work here!

I have so much to say, but because a picture is worth 1,000 words, let me just put up a series of them and save the rest of my stories for later... 

HONG KONG

Hong Kong is an amazingly beautiful island!!

THE PHILIPPINES

Landing in the Philippines - Tuesday Evening

Visiting Riverside Slum - Wednesday Afternoon

Riverside Preschool Project


Students from the Riverside Preschool Project

After visiting the school, we walked through the slum.

This included walking across crazy, unstable bridges like this one.

These bridges help people stay dry because they live in the flood zone.
However, sometimes the water comes several feet higher than the bridges!

Today, we visited a slum that has been rebuilt:

Mariposa "Butterfly" - 100+ Homes, built by GK

ICM & GK Ministeries are working together to rebuild more slums in the future.
Riverside (several pictures above) is scheduled to begin soon and will look similar to Mariposa.

While at Mariposa, we played with kids for about an hour.

Afterwards, we attended a pastor's conference in Bacolod, that has been going on since yesterday and ends tomorrow night.  In attendance are 1,000+ pastors that have been raised up and trained by ICM.

Do you see their passion as they worship together?

It's incredible!  Take a moment and listen to it by following this YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q65tiBTto3A