Christmastime Came & Gone

I can't even express how quickly the past few weeks have flown by. All of my time was spent preparing things for Christmas. Things like wrapping gifts, choosing clothing for the children to wear on Christmas, preparing for parties, shopping for gifts, making a "Merry Christmas" lettering to go on the wall...all of these things completely filled my time. I had an amazing time during all of this and I am so blessed to have been a part of it.

My oldest M is doing wonderfully! She has now moved up and gets to hang out with the older Agape girls. She is really thriving in this area and is acting more grown up through the influence of the older girls. I am having so much fun with her! The girls are on holiday from school so now that Christmas is over I have been filling my time hanging out with them and playing games. It has been a nice restful time.

We had many visitors here for Christmas! Trip and Susan, the founders of Rainbow, are here for about two months. They are such legends around here! They have done so much for this community and pretty much everyone knows them and has been impacted by them in some way.

There was also a young missionary couple from Manila that came for two weeks at Christmas. They were so much fun! I will be able to stay with them on my return back to the States when I have my layover in Manila. I am so blessed to know them now and I can stop fretting about staying overnight in Manila alone.

We also had the staff Christmas party last week where all of the staff brought their families and the Agape girls were able to invite their families, if they had any. The party was great and it was a lot of fun getting to meet everyone. We also played a traditional game called "manito manita" It is like the American form of the "secret santa" game...but you have to dance around in a circle. We also had special numbers at the party. For our office staff number, I was the star for the song "Do you hear what I hear". The Agape girls did a skit about the birth of Jesus in the form of a newscast. I helped with the two youngest M's and we did commercials. I had to speak into the microphone and also sing a song! Highly unusual for me! I also helped with prompting if the girls forgot their lines. It was a lot of fun and I was glad when it was over. The yaya's also did a special number where they all dressed up and did a dance. Some of the staff's kids did songs too. It was really cute!

Here are some photos from all of the events!
The two oldest M's at their school's Christmas party. They sang a candle light "happy birthday Jesus" and they were giggling about something.
Dumaguete's Boulevard street with the traditional Christmas decoration... Stars! Just like the star the shepherds followed!
The staff Christmas play of "Do you hear what I hear"
My 3 beautiful M's
Christmas Eve night is called Buena Noche. We stay up until midnight and the girls get to open their gifts. They some of us slept outside on the patio!







Also the "Merry Christmas 2008" on the wall in the background of some of the photos... I made that! I have never hated glitter more in my life!

Blessings to all and I hope you all had a great holiday!

The Lord is my Shepherd

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to Samboan, Cebu for church. I will do a sort of picture entry so it can be like you went too...sort of.
First we took a boat over, but I did not get a picture of that. It was about a half hour boat ride across. Then we got off the boat and took a pedicab to the bus stop. Pedicabs in this part of Cebu are different from Dumaguete's. I actually like them in Cebu a lot better!


Then we took the Ceres Liner. These are huge yellow and white busses that are all over the Philippines. Most of the time the drivers are very crazy because they try to get wherever they are going very quickly and everyone does a good job of moving out of their way. This is Carmen and I being a little bit worried...


Then we arrived at Calvary Chapel Samboan!


The congregation was very small maybe about 30 or 40 people. Ate Karen even said that since it was the first Sunday of the month all of the outreach bible studies come so there was a large attendance on this Sunday. Ate Karen had spent almost a month their when she first became a missionary in the Philippines. She has a lot of special bonds and relationships with the people. It was so nice to meet them all and see their love for the Lord. The message was all in Visayan with a little bit of English. I understood some of it. It was a very good message about Psalm 23. The Lord is our shepherd. We also looked at a passage in 1 Thessalonians. We are His sheep and we must follow our shepherd and obey Him.



After the service was over, we ate lunch at Ate Ping's house with her daughters Judah and Jedadiah. They are ages 6 and 5. Then we went on a walk around the town.



After we returned back to the church we waited for a bus and took it back to the bus stop. But they dropped us off to early so we had to walk a bit of ways to catch a pedicab. Then we took the pedicab back to the boat dock. The pedicab we were in had a sticker that said "The Lord is my Shepherd". Thanks for the reminder! Then took the boat back to Sibulan and our trip was over. It was such a blessing to be able to visit the church in Samboan!

Parade and Pigs

Here are some photos from NORSU's (Negros ORiental State University) founder's day parade. The theme for the parade was Disney movies. Two of our girls were in the parade. One was actually walking in the parade holding up a prop, and another was doing crowd control on the street.









Our pig that was pregnant went into labor on Monday morning. She continued to have contractions, but no piglets were coming out. The vet came and gave her meds to induce labor. Still wal'ay piglets. Yesterday afternoon (Wednesday) she gave birth to a still born piglet. Several hours later, and after the vet had done more injections, the vet and his assistant were able to pull out, yes pull out, 4 piglets. They had left for a period of time in between to get supplies and dinner and during that time, another piglet began to come out. Leanna, myself, and some of the girls had to think fast and get the pig out. Leanna was very brave and pulled it out. Yesterday six piglets came out, all dead. Today, three more came out with assistance. Come to find out that the poor mama pig's birth canal very very small. It was such a sad experience and we believe that all of the dead piglets have been taken out of the mama. She has been trying to look for them, but they aren't there. Here is a photo of the first pig to come out (patay=dead) and then another photo of the vet and his assistant with piglet number three.