When the Streets Come to Life

After the sweltering sun has faded into the horizon, the streets come to life even more so than during the hustle and bustle of the day. It is one of my favorite times of the day. In the "cool" of the evening, you will find vendors lining the streets and setting up their stalls with vegetables, fruits, rice, and fish. Street vendors with food carts also line the streets where you can buy BBQd meat, peanuts, mammon (a type of sweet bread), and various fried food, including famous ones and one of my favorites, lumpia. I love walking the streets near my barangay and observing all of this taking place. Every so often, I will be greeted by the friendly fish lady and rice vendor. Seeing children running back and forth between the food carts makes the scene even better.

The streets at night also take on another meaning. You will see more street kids out and about selling their flower necklaces for 10 pesos (it takes about 45 pesos to equal one U.S. dollar) or walking around with their palm out, indicating that they are "asking" for a few pesos. You will also observe families sorting through garbage, trying to find items to salvage that the street sweepers have put into piles throughout the day. And, depending on where you are at, you will see girls starting to line the streets to see who their "prospective client" could be.

It is moments like this where I sometimes ask myself: "Am I doing enough? What else can I do to reach the street kid, the girl in the Red Light District, the family that is going through the garbage pile and sometimes selling coal to make a living--what more?" My heart cries out for these injustices, and the verse in the fifth chapter of Amos has become my declaration: "Do you know what I want? I want justice--oceans of it. I want fairness--rivers of it. That's what I want. That's all I want." I know that I literally cannot give every child on the street a few pesos and therefore find myself asking: "Okay, God, is he/she the one you want me to give to?" It's a struggle, and there have been times, once I have reached the comfort of my own home, that I have broken down and cried.

In other news, the boys from the Home are doing very well in school. One of the older boys recently took an exam to test out of his current grade level--4th grade. (If you remember from an earlier post, most boys are behind in their studies.) He passed and is enrolled in the 7th grade, equivalent to the first year of high school in the States!

My language class is going well. I wish I had more time in the week to attend more classes. I have been so blessed by the friendships I have made with my small group of girls. I look forward to our Monday night meetings and even when we can get together outside of the group.

A quick update on some of the organizations that ER partners with:

• Youth Mobilization, the group that I volunteer with once a month, has been growing and expanding by leaps and bounds! They now are serving in other neighborhoods and also have Bible studies for the parents.

• Seeds of Love, the organization that ministers to children with cancer have purchased a halfway house for the children and their families to stay at when they come to Manila for treatment. I cannot begin to tell you how much of a blessing this building is for these families! They no longer have to worry about transportation or whether they have enough funds to make it to the city for their next round of chemo. They now know that they will have a comfortable place to stay that isn't too far from the hospital when they come.