The Shields Family

We haven’t been great about blogging, but we do have some pictures to share in this post. A couple of the pictures are views from two of the different “classrooms” in which I tutor students. The first picture shows a group of children playing at the bottom of a steep flight of stairs in one of Cebu’s many squatter camps. Last week as I walked with one of Red Window Project’s students to this location, I was humbled when many of the children, who do not attend school, blessed me as I walked through an alleyway with the student. In the Philippines, a child blesses his/her elders by raising the hand of the elder to the child’s forehead. Children as young as one year of age bless their elders, but so do teenagers who are in college. The next picture shows a street in a barangay (Filipino neighborhood) where the streets are always full of activity. It is also a place where there is much drug addiction. This particular neighborhood has about 7,000 residents.

This past weekend we were honored to participate in the beautiful commitment ceremony of a friend of ours who is moving to the US today. The couple met at a Bible study in Cebu, and he was an IJM intern while she was on staff there. It was an emotional ceremony, and we were grateful to be part of it. There was a dress code for the wedding, which is why we were wearing matching clothes in the photo.