I've now uploaded some photos from the journey and the first few days (well I will have uploaded them by the time I've written this). There's some of the girls and staff and some of the general area. I hope they give you some idea of what its like here.Everything is going well.

The culture here, as expected, is very different. I've tried some new foods (they have green, soft coconuts here!) and been through the markets which is very hectic - things are so cheap though! Also the transport, as you may see in some of the photos, is mainly jeeps and tricycles (a motorbike with a sidecar - we fit five or six people on them at one time! No road safety here at all.) The tricycles are great fun!

Yesterday we went to Church in the morning. It was very lively and all of the songs and most of the talk was in English which was good. We still think its strange how a church has most things in English when the poorer people don't always understand it… doesn't seem very accessible…. However some people don't speak tagalog well either as there are local languages. If you walk for 10 miles in any direction the language spoken locally will change at least once in that distance - I think it dates back to when there were more tribes. Apparently Tagalog was invented by the government to allow people to communicate better - it's a very logically structured language (only 3 tenses!). This means that the majority of Filipinos are tri-lingual! Makes me quite ashamed!

After church we went to visit Paulo's family and then his wife Mai's family. That was the first place we went to which felt like the beginning of real poverty. Its on the edge of a squatter area. About 4 generations living in one or two rooms and there were children everywhere! Its disturbing seeing poverty in a way I've never encountered in this country but the amazing thing is (and everyone I talk to who has encountered real poverty says this) most people were smiling and there was such a lovely family atmosphere. I think many of the men get depressed from doing nothing. There is a huge drinking problem here.

Today was the first working day for us at the centre. We went to the hygiene clinic where the women have to go weekly for a check-up to ensure they are 'clean' for their customers! We were handing out leaflets for RENEW. I'm sure many of the girls were under 18 but they would never admit to it - there is a big problem of minors working in the bars, but it is better than it used to be. After that we went to Fields Avenue which is one of the three main areas of bars. There are about 300 bars over the 3 areas. Every single white person we saw was a balding, overweight, middle-aged man. Often they had a girl with them who they were taking back to their hotel - made me feel both sick and angry at the sight. I understand why they visit the bars but I cannot understand how they can think its ok to do what they do. We were heckled by some drunk Americans because we refused to speak to them while they were in the bars.

Its amazing what RENEW do for people. In a very practical way they do what is needed to help. We just heard a new case study that came in today about 2 girls who were trafficked from a nearby squatter area to Malaysia where they were forced into debt and in order to repay debts they had to have sex with clients. Apparently if they ever came close to repaying their debts they would be handed over to the police…. These girls escaped and RENEW is now going to counsel and help educate them so they can find work. One of the huge problems with trafficking is that no women are willing to prosecute the traffickers because they just want to forget what happened. In the UK women are offered citizenship in return for being willing to prosecute… so trafficking remains unchallenged over here. There have been 8 prosecutions out of thousands and thousands of cases in the last 3 years.

Anyway I'm sorry this has been rather long. Bit of a brain overload! God blessLots of lovexxx