Thank you for the heads up!!! The boys I sponsor are 7,8,9 I believe. They are all from the South. One lives in Davao in the Sasa Hills, one lives 83km South of Dipolog and one lives 234km East of Zamboanga. Since I am so close to almost dunking I am going to try and give it a good final push these last few months to get that dunk with 2 hands. I don’t want to arrive empty handed so to speak!!! hahaha Nonetheless I am very thankful I am able to visit and hope to take tons of pictures of everything we do and some videos if I can get my hands on a video camera. This may be my last trip for a few years. Thanks again for the advice!!! I thought maybe if I say “YES!!!” to all the potential marriage proposals with a HUMONGOUS smile on my face maybe that could provide me with A WAY OF ESCAPE!!! Or maybe I should just put in a few extra running sessions with my triathlon training!!! This trip will be nearly twice as long as my Nicaragua trip last year b/c that Sponsor Tour was only 7 days and a group of us missed the first day b/c of a plane delay. So I am very excited in all that we will get to experience in the 12 or so days of this trip!!! Thanks for all your work with Compassion Dwight!!!

I Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for YOU!!!”

Depending on the age of your child he might only speak a local language. In school they learn Tagalog and English (unless he is from the Manila area). If your child is older he should speak some English. On my trip I had one of my sponsored children teach me some of the language…so you might want to have them teach it to you in the local language his speaks. Many nationals speak good English.

Most Filipino’s are only about 5 feet tall…give or take a few inches so that fact that you can touch the rim on the basketball court will be vary impressive to them.

FYI – if you’re single…one of the single men in our group had some issues with women coming up to him on the street and asking him to marry them.

P.S. I wanted to learn “Awesome God” by Rich Mullins in Tagalog or any dialect for that matter for when I go over does anyone have a clue??? b/c I do not!!!

God changes the world by using large numbers of regular people doing a little. Like my grandparents regular people…. Sometimes I wonder if my sponsorship really matters but as a part of a larger group of people we can have an effect on a developing country just like the previous generation did for Korea!

After ww2 we did not send people to Japan and today they are rich but poor spiritually. Only about ½% of Japanese are Christians. When a lot of average people do nothing, nothing happens.

Elaina

Thanks, Wess.