California Dreamin'

This past week and a half have been very eventful! I'll try to remember everything, but I might add some more later if I forget something important.

Let's start with the Fourth of July, known here as Filipino/American friendship day. We totally forgot the day until the end of the day when I had the bright idea to take a fun picture in patriotic colors. Shown below. :)


The next day had two significant events. The first was one of my teammates falling and getting a bad sprained ankle. It's almost completely healed now, but it sure did take it's time! The second even was that the Bob Tebow team came. There were about fifteen American youth (high school and college age) from Florida with him. It was very exciting for the kids, and a little different for us to have other Americans there. They brought lots of supplies for the kids and played with them almost the whole time they were there. Unfortunately, they were only able to stay for one night. However, they will be coming back the night before we leave. Mr. Tebow gave me a good hard time for being from California and not a fan of college football. He called me California Dreamin', which I felt was more appropriate than he realized! Here's the all the kids doing a performance for their visitors.


On Sunday, as I was taking some pictures of flowers for a collage I'm planning to make, I got covered in red ants. My left arm, legs, and foot got twenty four bites total. Bummer! It was pretty bad, but I restrained myself from scratching. They're still visible now, but no longer itching. Also, I have been barely bitten other than that in the past few weeks.

Next was Monday, when we held True Love Waits Lesson 2 at the local high school. We added a section on showing respect to the opposite sex, particularly for some boys who thought it was funny to yell out inappropriate comments across the yard to us. They still do it, but maybe it'll sink in eventually. Some of the high school boys are older, like in their early twenties, and are already acting as bad as some of the men here. Anyway, this is me teaching one of the classes. Look how precious they are, being all studious and taking notes!

This one was actually taken the first week.

On Tuesday, we took off on a little adventure to Davao. Each Nehemiah Team gets a mid-trip vacation of three days and two nights to relax and regroup. We spent at least half of the time traveling and getting our gifts squared away, but it was well worth it. We stayed at a lovely place on the beach and were given the resident price (which is significantly lower than the tourist price) as well as a ten percent discount for being missionaries. It was VERY nice. :) Here's me on the beach.


We returned to the orphanage to find that we had been greatly missed. We jumped right back in to life there with our regular assignments and Bible studies. On Saturday, instead of having our usual day off since we really didn't need it, we took the five college girls out on a date. They were extatic to get to go into town and go to the mall. It was a day of firsts for them: their first time to go out without their house-parents, eat pizza, to go to a restaurant with Americans, get manicures, and go bowling. We also gave them five dollars each to buy themselves some things at the department store. The day was a big hit, needless to say. At the end of the day, we Americans were exhausted and the Filipinas were still excited, like kids who had just left Disneyland. Here's us at Shakey's Pizza (minus Sheri, who is taking the picture).


Not much new stuff has happened since then. We had our last session of TLW with the orphans. We had already finished the lessons, so we shared our personal testimonies on the topic. It went really well since the three of us had completely different testimonies. We held our third session
of TLW at the high school, and it went well. There is one session where the team has to split up, so I teach one class of fourth years while Sheri and Hannah teach a class of first years. I get a little discouraged in that class because I really feel like I'm not getting through to most of them. I asked the teacher to stay in the class with me for crowd control, and it went a little bit better this week. The teacher whose class we are teaching is an excellent host. He always prepares some sort of yummy snack for us in the teachers' room for break time, and we joke that we would come just for the snacks. But seriously, most of the classes are really receptive to us, and I get the feeling that we might do a lot of good in the area of prevention. When I look at some of their sweet little faces, I pray that we will.

Here's some pictures of daily life for us. To begin, we wake up just before the sunrise every weekday morning. This is the view from our window.
Next we get the kids ready for school and then walk them there.
While they're gone, we do our marketing in the open market in town. Here's the fruits and vegetables area.
We try to buy our meat right away, before the day gets too late. The meat market is a really interesting place. Here's me having some fun with a small shark and an eel's head. About twenty people gathered for our little photo shoot and they were rolling in laughter.

After school, we do our orphanage devotions. Then we have dinner and homework time. This is me working really hard with my assigned child, Angel. It's her little face that she makes, don't ask me what it's supposed to mean though!
This is another one of my little buddies, JohnRel. He's so sweet!
Shortly after homework time, we tuck into bed, literally!

Here's us dressed up for Sunday morning.
This is me and KB at church. He's the youngest orphan.
And this is Carlos, the child I was originally assigned to.
This past Sunday, I rode home from church on top of the jeep. Here's a picture I took from there.

Other than that, life has been rolling by for me. It's so easygoing and enjoyable here. However, I have noticed (understatement of the year) that the time to go home is drawing near. I'm pretty excited to see everyone (second understatement of the year). Hehe, some song that opened with "California, here I come" just started playing on the radio in here. Just pray for us that we would finish strong and have a fruitful debrief. Also, please pray for the kids, as our leaving will be really tough on them. Thanks so much for "joining" me on my long journey! I might not write again until after I get home. Hopefully I can talk to you all in person really soon!

Love,
California Dreamin'