National Bible Week 2013

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Unlike our usual 1030AM mass in a mall in Makati, the family attended the 830AM mass today at St. Joseph the Worker Parish.

The priest announced during his homily that 20 lucky people will each get a free Bible because today culminates the week-long celebration of National Bible Week 2013. The theme for this year's celebration is "Proclaim the Word, Profess the Faith" with Psalm 119:105 and 2 Timothy 2:4a as reference verses.

After church, churchgoers lined up to get a piece of paper from a can. If "congratulations" is written on the paper, a Bible is given to that person. No one in our family though was lucky enough to get one. Probably it's God's way of telling us that we already have a Bible so he's giving it to those who doesn't have one yet.

Grom Social, Social Networking for Kids

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I was watching the early morning news a few weeks back, after dropping off RJ in school, while finishing off some blogging tasks and a report caught my attention. The report was about a social networking website for the youth. It's called Grom Social.

Here's an excerpt from their Grom Social Story page, "I am 11 years old, and one of six children. My brothers, sisters, close friends, and I created a social networking site for young kids and teens. It's a place to chat, make new friends, learn interesting things, and play games. I started Grom Social in November of 2011. It has been hard work."

RJ hasn't tried the site yet so I'm not sure if they allow all kinds of advertisements like they do on Facebook. Kid-friendly ads is ok but some ads from other social networking sites are not really too kid-friendly.

Have you or any of your kids joined this social networking site already? What do you think of it?

Earning a living on the streets of Manila

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During a red traffic light on our way home from the family house in Makati, I saw a few girls who are about RJ's age dancing in front of stopped cars. I guess the knocking on car windows to beg for money doesn't work that much anymore? Or maybe they've thought of this new trick for them to be different from all other beggars on the street.

It was a bit dark already. I wonder if the parents know these girls are still on the street, dancing in front of cars to earn a few coins?! I'm sure they won't earn that much, not even enough to buy cheap things from an 88 pesos store (philippine version of a dollar store).

Does DSWD know about this? Since it was night time already, car headlights were already on. The young girls can be seen by everyone because the headlights serve like a spotlight. These girls will get in trouble if they encounter bad people. I hope someone can put a stop to this.