It's hard to believe that in a few short days I will have been here for a month! I can honestly say that every day here has been amazing. I just returned from a week in the province of San Antonio, where the main campus of Shepherd of the Hills is located. It is a 4 hour ride by bus from the office in Manila.

We were able to treat the kids to a day at the beach, thanks to some money sent for that purpose from a friend in the UK. It was so much fun to spend the day splashing around with the kids in the ocean and to eat ice cream on the sand.

Most mornings of my time in Zambales were spent helping teacher Elena with the kid's lessons. It is so much harder to teach preschoolers rather than the highschoolers- they understand very little English. Thankfully a few of the older girls helped to translate! In the afternoons I had time to work on several projects that I am in the middle of and in the evening I got to spend lots of time just bonding with the older kids. I have heard so many stories that break my heart. Very few of the children at SOTH have not experienced horrible abuses and it is hard to hear about their lives... I pray that the Lord will be able to use me to help bring them healing in any way I can.

On Sunday we had an open-air church service with the kids on benches underneath the trees. Sunday night was one of the highlights of my time in San Antonio. I stayed up late with some of the teenage girls and boys sitting outside underneath the stars listening to their stories and telling goofy jokes. We grabbed a guitar and started singing all the worship songs we knew with the word "stars" in them.

Another Highlight of being in Zambales was grabbing the cans of silly string that I had brought with me and running around like a crazy woman spraying it all over the kids! One of the sweetest sounds that I have ever heard is a bunch of excited little voices calling "Ate Hannah, Ate Hannah!".

Here are some pictures from the past week: more to come later!