I can hear my belly getting fatter as I eat my second cinnamon roll here at the ‘2nd Mile’. As I have already said, I love this place, but I have not already said all the reasons.
We arrived here a couple hours later than we had hoped yesterday. We were welcomed into a new, bright, and clean guest house, and we met the North American missionaries. We talked and drank COFFEE. We were told by our Filipino contacts when we first arrived that the Filipinos are all about coffee. Which made me happy, thrilled, even. Then for the last 10 days I have felt depressed or bipolar and I wonder if I have issues deeper than ADHD.
For almost two weeks, this coffee was a single packet of the 3 in 1 stuff from Nestle that is all the rage and I haven’t gotten my head out of my butt the whole time I have been here. Well almost. We have managed to get to Starbucks a couple times and then I get all manic and wound up and the next morning back to hanging my head.
When we arrived here and sat to meet our contacts, the first thing they did was bring over filter brewed coffee. Big mugs of it, and they were instantly my best friends in the whole world. They shared their story and their vision and we sipped our coffee and sat in front of the fan.
Honest Hands is the group we have worked with. These are the street boys that have been chosen to be discipled here, to me it sounds like the hydroponics we learned about and the seedlings we planted at the farm, just that these seedlings are boys being prepared to be planted back into the world after 9 months. Carl, their leader says that they have a very good success rate, however that is measured, but just like the parable of the sower and the seeds, some fall by the wayside, some struggle, but that is life in the real world.
Working Hands started with an automotive technology shop. The leaders disciple young men by teaching them a trade. A metal shop and a wood working shop have also been set up. We took a tour of the wood shop and heard their vision, and I thought how cool this would be to be a part of, and I thought of my Uncle Paul who is a carpenter and makes furniture and what a great ministry this is.
Mustard Seed is the parallel vision for women here. A christian business man donated a bunch of sewing machines and the women are taught how to sew and how to do math and they are discipled.
We are now off to a meeting, so that brings this to an end.
