BACK IN THE UK

Hi everyone

We have just arrived home, glad to be here but sad at the circumstances.

Will catch up with everyone soon, but first catching up with three days of sleepless nights.

Thank you for all your prayers.

Sue and Stan

SAD NEWS

A sad update from us - we had to be escorted from the school on the dump site yesterday by our wonderful loyal staff surrounding us as they and us have been told, (by anonymous text), that if we go back there we will not come out alive.

Sounds very dramatic, but our staff are taking this as a real threat, probably linked to us looking into some practices involving the abuse of donors money.

Whilst we have had threats in the past, this time they have told us the people concerned (some of whom are possibly employees) are not to be crossed, as they have ruled things on the dump site for a long time,
They have suggested we must leave before there is the chance of retaliation, so with a heavy heart we have agreed to return to the UK.

We will continue to support the work of PCF, which continues to be a wonderful project educating and supporting the poorest of the poor, but it seems that will have to be from the UK rather than Manila.

Please pray for the loyal staff remaining, some of whom are in fear for their life. We are fortunate that we can walk away, they live the danger every day.

If we had been in any doubt that leaving was the right thing to do (and we had considered very carefully if there was any way we could return), today one of our men was shot for refusing to give someone a cigarette, and is in a serious condition in hospital.
We have spent the day, and most of the night, putting some things in place which we hope will help the remaining staff.

We leave tomorrow, so will be seeing some of you sooner than we thought.
Sue and Stan

17 DAYS AND COUNTING

Hi all
Just a brief update. Can't believe we have only been back for 17 days, it seems so much longer. We certainly seemed to have fitted a lot in!


Just looking at the prayer requests from the last blog, feedback as follows on those four items:

• School principal - we have interviewed a wonderful lady who came out of the blue just after this prayer request. She seems ideal - waiting for her to sign a contract, so keep praying on that one. This also marks a first for us - never interviewed a school principal before!

• The meetings with the staff, teachers etc took 6 hours (with a 20 minute break for a bowl of rice!). Despite the length, they were positive and productive - God is good.

• The tropical storm came - torrential rain and flooded roads. Couldn't go anywhere.........

• .......Which is why the meeting with the accountant was cancelled - result! 

For the coming weeks we have to focus on financial planning for the next 12 months. Not easy when the only regular income is for child sponsorship, which only covers a small portion of our costs, and the rest is reliant on generous donors.

So prayers please that God will continue to provide and that we will be wise with the income he is entrusting us with.

Thanks to some very generous donations from members of St Andrew's congregation - you know who you are - we are already looking at ID for the staff and employing professionally qualified security guards as one of our priorities is to address security at the school. (So important for  the safety of the children and the staff because of the area in which we work).

We have mentioned before that one of the things we struggled to get used to was the fact that all police and security guards (and pretty much everyone employs them), carry guns. It is a fact of life here that we have to accept.

 What has made us both roar with mirth this week is that the firm of guards we are about to employ are called 'SHOOTERS'!

With love and prayers

Sue and Stan