It has of course been way to long since I posted!!!

What am I up to? I have currently 5 jobs. I write articles for Kairos (GBIM’s monthly publication), personnel intern for GBIM, working on a research project for Dr.Prinsen, working on another research project for Driven, and last but not least I teach tennis.

Needless to say this takes up a lot of my time!! Also needless to say is that I am having fun and enjoying summer. I am always up to something on the weekend, whether it be helping my Grandma move or going out on the lake. Here are some highlights!

1. One day a bunch of us went out onto WL and went wake boarding and tubing. Then we cleaned up at went to Fort Wayne and ate at Flat Top Grill… a Mongolian BBQ place. On the way beck home we stopped to play mini golf and we had a blast. Sadly I had no hole in ones but it was just a GREAT time.

2. Taking Stone and Payne (two boys from my church) to go to play mini golf, ride a small rollarcoaster, rock climb, play arcade games, and race gocarts! It was not only fun to watch these boys enjoy themselves but it was also nice to just be out on such a nice day.

3. This one might be my favorite… I went night golfing with Glenn (My campus safety boss), Craige (Glenns boss) and Alex (My co-worker). We started golfing right around 9pm… and eneded 9 holes later at 12am!! It took us three hours because we lost a couple balls to a big water trap… we kept looking for balls in the dark shadows…. and looking for balls in the field next to the course (we found 8 before finding the one I actually hit!). Over all it was a blast and some good clean fun!

HEY!!!

I know I know it has been FOUR days!! We have been in Boracay doing just about everything! We stayed in a hotel about  200 yards from the beach and we had AIR CONDITIONING!! It was just simply wonderful.

As for what we did on the trip ministry wise, we feed children. Everyday, except the last we went to different feeding sites on the island and fed children that would be starving if the feeding program was not there. Before actually feeding the kids we sang songs and told a Bible story. Before they could eat we also had to give them vitamins and if they had wounds we checked those too. These kids were GREAT and it was cool to see them recite Bible verses and teach us new songs.

We worked on a construction site twice while we were there. The first day was a lot of shoveling and bagging of dirt. The tsecond time me a two others went on the second floor and tied rebarb together with metal ties. That was until it started to rain, actually that didnt stop us. What did was the whole lightening aspect of things! You know working with metal in a lightening storm is not safe…

Besides working we had a GREAT time!! We went swimming in the China Sea, went para-sailing, snorkeling, and got some Henna! Needless to say it was a lot of fun and more relaxing then it is here in Manila. Boracay is a very pretty island, and no lie it would be fun to go back either for vacation or to work there short term.

I know that I have not written much but I am just so dang tired. Hopefully I will post more!!

Peace Out!

So today has been a long restful day. Have done nothing today but sleep.

I am still sick but my temp isn’t as high as it was this morning. Needless to say I didn’t go to church today, lunch, or shopping.

I figured that I should post since I have posted everday! For more info go to esfeather.com cause he has posted things about today!!

Things to pray for
1. Our travels tomorrow to the beach!!!
2. The sickness on the team!

Peace out!!

Here is the pic of the day for Day 4. Me blowing bubbles and the kids trying to pop them all!! Too much fun… bubbles were a hit everytime!

Technically it is now day  6 but… I got a little behind yesterday. Right now it is 3:30 in the morning here!! You are probably wondering why I am up so incredibly early… last nights dinner or something didn’t sit well.  SO, I am awake and downstairs cause I have to run to the restroom a lot… I know I know too much info. Whatever .

Yesterday was a really cool day. After breakfast Donna myself and Bri went and walked the streets of the community we are in. We ran into Marco, not sure how old he is but the three of us were able to have a good conversation with him. We are hoping to go see him again in a couple days.

Next we did a childrens program at the Arthur Center. This time my role was to explain the salvation bracelets. It is a strand of leather with five beads on it.

Black: We all have sin in our lives

Red: Jesus died to take away our sins

White: Because Jesus died for us he makes us clean

Yellow: Once becoming a Christian we are going to Heaven with streets of gold

Green: For now, on Earth, we need to continue to grow in Him.

Lunch was back at the green house. We had the choice of chicken curry or a similar thing to Parmesan chicken… over rice of course! It wasn’t too bad, I dint have the curry but the other chicken was OK. Right before this is when I started to not feel so good. So I went upstairs and took a 45 minute nap!! Oh that was a glorious nap!

Then it was time to leave for the mall/market. This place has a square layout on the outside are thing like Starbucks and actual name brand stuff, on the inside however, there is an enclosed market. At this market I think I spent around $100, I got 2 pairs of new tennis shoes, souvenirs, Yes mom I remembered to get Grandma and Grandpa something . I got scarfs, a golf shirt (pink by the way), a beach dress, and I think something else but I can’t really remember… All I know is that it totaled 15 things.

After losing all my money to buying things at the market we went out to eat at Chili’s. I had the avocado burger, it was GREAT. It was a good time to sit with each other and share our purchases. In all I bought the most!

We headed back to the green house, my stomach still felt a little uneasy. Instead of going to bed right away ( I think it was around 9pm) me and a couple others went up the street and tried to get coke in a bag. The place we went to had coke… but no bags. If you don’t know what coke in a bag is, it is literally a small bottle of coke poured into a ziplock like bag and you are given a straw! Maybe tonight or something we will be able to actually get one!

That was day 5 in a quick note. Tomorrow is church! Hopefully I will go… I really want to see a Filipino church service.

Peace Out!

Ok so it is now Saturday morning but I never did finish telling you about yesterday!

After lunch, we went over to the Aurthur Center and we met Dan Bucher, a Grace grad, who is in charge of the community center. We walked around to look at the facilities a little bit, they have a dental area, church area, and a basketball court. We were going to do two programs in close to the Author Center. Dan asked if three people could stay back and help out putting up a new backboard and painting lines. I volunteered myself, too many people in our group would not want to be “stuck” painting lines, so me and two others stayed.

During those couple hours I climbed up on to the backboard and sanded some of its supports and unscrewed bolts on the wood. That alone took almost 2 hours because of the rustedness of the bolts. I was like dripping sweat when I finished undoing the secind bolt, it was GREAT. I actually thought it was fun because I learned a little bit more about Chris, a missionary here, and a little more about the culture. As I was undoing bolts, there were I think four men  doing construction behind me. I don’t think I saw more then two of the four working at the same time. They took really long breaks. Awomen passed by and said hello to me  and then asked where the man was, cause clearly I was doing a “man’s” job. It made me laugh a bit.

For dinner we went to Super Bowl of China. Not going to lie I didn’t like the place too much. The sweet and sour chicken was probably the best. Other then that I didn’e really care for some of the food. Oh and we ate family style, sorry forgot to mention that, so we ordered six or seven dishes and split them between us.

We came back from dinner and I was feeling too good and I was really tired. So I didn’t partake in the eating of Boult (spelling is probably WAY off). Anyways, it is a hard boiled egg, BUT it has a developing baby chicken!! Hahaha so those with weak stomachs sorry! Even though it is a partly grown chicken, it taste the exact same as a hard boiled egg.

That is the conclusion of Day 4!!

PICTURES!!!!

These were both taken this morning!!

It is Friday afternoon here… and this is the second time today I am writing on this blog! This morning I was at Kait’s condo (a glorified Alpha room) so we had to ride the motor bike back  over to where the team is staying! Yes mom I was riding a motor bike… and no I did not have a helmet on!! Don’t worry I am still here!
This morning we did another round of one word feelings. Some of the ones that came up were: Torn. Extreme. Important. Pushing. World view ruined. Beautiful. Striking. Passion.

My word for the day would be captivating! Every were I look I am intrigued and want to learn more about what ever it is.

Then is was Heidi’s turn for devotions. Here topic was on loving others. Heidi got that from a book she is currently reading called “Crazy Love”. One of the major things that she mentioned from the book and her thoughts combine was that ” I need God to love God… I need God to love others”. It covered the fact that God really doesn’t need us but he wants us and that  we need his strength to even love Him.

It has been amazing to see how our morning devotions have come together so well. Tomorrow Donna is up to bat… I can’t wait to see what she has to say.

After breakfast we headed over to the same part of town where Woven Joy is located. We got dropped off a told to go gather kids. It was a WHOLE lot easier to do it here then in the states. Adam, myself, and Camden walked together down one of the side streets… and yes we look like we were married and Cam was our kid… I have a picture that will show you what I mean later.

It was great to get the kids. After Adam did a few dunks on one of the shortened baskets we had a following. At one point we had at least 20 kids following us!! CRAZY!!!

We led them over to where our first children’s program was going to be. To much of our surprise the kids were sitting in chairs and CALM!! We started the program with three songs. Little lite of mine, Deep and Widwe, and Father Abraham. The kids had fun and were defuinitly laughing at us!!

After songs when did a skit depicting Jericho. My part in the skit was to play God… yea… that was fun… hahaha. Then it was time to hand out the bracelts that depict the gospel on them. It was INSANE handing out the bracelets everybody wanted one and we had to tie them also. That took a fair amount of time but was great. Game wise we played the simple Simon Says game. It was fun and the kids didn’t fully understand what we were doing but still great.

After that we had the chance to hand out candy to them, which was pretty much like a hundred kids circling you food candy… they just kept grabbing. Oh did I mention there were probably around 250 kids there!!! CRAZY

Our program was officially over… as tiring as it was it was great to see the joy on these kids faces!! We got to stay and hang out with kids a little bit more before returning. They really loved bubbles AND having their picture taken!! Hahaha. Too fun!

Alright lunch is calling my name. We have 2 more programs to do today!!! Please PRAY!!

Peace Out.

Part 2 is coming later.

Today was a day of contrasts…

Before we went out for the day we had team time. We sang songs mainly talking about how God strenghthens us as is worth of our praise. I led devotions today. We looked at psalm 59:16-17. Which talks about God being our strong hold and our fortress through times of difficulty… Luke stepping out of our confort zone…

Kait shared with us some information on where we were going for the afternoon. Woven Joy is a micro enterprise that sells bracelets to people… Usually in the USA. Only women work there and they all have a story. I got to meet Fritz who is the admin, she makes the bracelets and does the business side of things.

She is the same year as I am in school, which is sweet. Fritz will be finishing up university next year with a marketing dagee. It may end up taking her a little longer because she is nine months pregnant!!! Yes nine months… And she still came to the Woven Joy meeting!!

The “meeting” was really just the same thing we do during team time. As a team we watched the sing a song in tagalog. Then Fritz shared a devotion on Psalm 41:12. Most of this meeting was not in English, that’s ok because it was nice to sit back a watch how these ladies worship.

I can’t forget to mention this but the whole time there were about 10 kids at the open door and windows of this room/ church we were in. Chaos would be the word to use for that. It didn’t bug the ladies at all, they just kept talking over the noise. After devotion time we got to learn and try to make the bracelets that they do. Not going to lie I thought it was hard at first but it got a lot easier after the first few knots. If you want anymore information about Woven Joy or just want to see the product go to their website

The one thing I have failed to mention is that Woven Joy is in a squatter village. Walking up and down the back alleys to get to the church building they meet in was almost heart breaking. There us pretty much shacks after shacks after shacks. There were people walking around or just sitting in the shade. Laundry hanging out side, dogs running around, a smell, and kids with smiles on their faces as they played. It was very interesting to see… As we all were stared at the entire time, cause they don’t see a lot of white people, especially twenty of them!!

After we got back from there we had a great lunch. There was a choice between a BBQ chicken like dish and beef with grilled onion and green pepper… Of course both with rice. I got beef, I ended up having to put some soy sauce on it because it didn’t have any sauce and it really needed something.

After lunch we went to a Amercan national cemetary in pretty much downtown Manila. This were all the men who died in combat in the Philippines during WWII. There were tones of crosses and in the middle was all the names of people not found. So it was cook to walk around an see those. Another cool part about it was the fact that it had grass!! That is rare here… Which is why they had to get the grass seed from somewhere else.

We then headed to the other part of downtown Manila. We went to a mall… A very ritzy mall, that sold anything from Prada to books. As soon as we got into this section of town we looked and felt out of place. The scenery changed drastically, people were actually dressed nice, drove nice cars, and from the road everyhing said money. This mall wasn’t insane fancy but for here it was, I decided not to explore the stores I could not afford and sat down with the Feather family and Kait. We ended up getting Starbucks and sitting the shade just talking and having a few laughs.

For dinner we ate at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co!!! It was AWESOME!!! I got ping pong chicken, it had pineapple mango sauce on it, some mashed potatos, corn on the cob, and I split some cheesy fries!!! It was great a with out a doubt I ate way too much… oh well. We drove back to our humble abode… I fell asleep for about half the drive!

Instead of staying the night there I went over to Kaits apartment and hung out with her and liz, who is an American who works at the childrens home with Kait. We ended up watching three or four episodes of friends… I love that show and haven’t watched it recently. It was very much a time to relax and hang out with a friend I have not seen in a while.

Things to pray for:

1. The 3 childrens programs we are putting on today!!

2. Connecting with the people on the street where we are living.

3. For the God to work through us when we are out of our comfort zone.

That is it folks… haha it is about 5:30am here… I can’t sleep… But I am done with this post… I am getting tired of using my iTouch to do this… It is much easier on a real computer!!!

Peace out!!

Tonight I am writing on my blog from an internet cafe in a local mall close to where we are staying. It is only about 8pm here and I feel like I am about to fall over and got to sleep!! Today has been a long but GREAT day!!!

This morning, after waking up once at 4am, I finally got out of bed at 6:15am. That isn’t too early for me but I had gone to bed at 7:30pm last night!!! So I have had plenty of sleep but was still tired all day!! For breakfast we had pancakes, eggs, papaya, mango, and pineapple. To say the least it was AMAZING!

After breakfast we had a time of reflection, worship, and devotion. We went around in a circle and said one word emotions for the trip so far. Excited, humbling, beautiful, welcomes, popular, intrigued, breathless, insecure, and overwhelming.

Comparitability was my word. I keep comparing things with other cultures I have been to, but more specifically to Thailand. Everything here is almost different to that trip. For instance: we have had a lot of American meals here in the Philippines. In Thailand we only really had Thai food. Both good. Both different.

Then we went into fears people have on this trip…

We don’t know if they will full understand the intent of our stay. Talking with the people and the communication barrier. Being able to relate to people in a different culture. Offending their culture. Being too “American”, might offend. Meeting new people.

After worship Scott shared a devotion on Psalms 5:3. Talked about laying request, then waiting in eagerness.

Then we cover some expectations we have of the trip…

To not want to leave here. Connections. To meet people. Build relationships. Will change OUR lives. Learn kids stories. Desire of missions to deepen. God will burst open my heart to work in it for the next two weeks. Future.

A few of the girls,  I think 4 or 5, have never been overseas before!! So this experience for them will be insane. Philippines is a third world country and this is their first time out of the USA!!

Kait (The missionary here) wanted us to tell her our names and why we came. Here are some of the awnsers.

Experience with the family. Spread Jesus. Love kids. To be in another culture. Global Perspectives class. Finding a heart for missions. Siblings have been here. Personal growth. Learn missions work. Interacting with kids.

My reason for come was because Scott asked me about a year ago to student lead the trip, I love different cultures, love kids, Kait is here, and I have wanted to go to a third world country.

More worship and prayer. Then it was Kait’s turn. Kait told us taught us something about Filipino culture and some of its language. We learned how to say thank you, none or no, hi and yes, and agree or right. Kait mentioned that Filipino’s feel indebted to Americans because of our help trying to liberate them.

After lunch it was off to the children’s home. We pretty much spent 2.5 hours playing with the kids. I spent a little time in the nursery with some of the kids under 3 years old. A little bit later I went out and played some soccer… in my flip flops! Needless to say it was dirty and fun… minus one part. I went to kick the ball with my right foot and my left foot ended up slipping and I fell flat on my back. It is 4 hours later and it still hurts to turn my neck too much!! Totally worth it though!!

For dinner we went to the mall… which I am sitting in now. There really isnt that much to the mall. There is a TON of food places and little shops mostly fool of jewlery, electronics, or department stores. It was fun to walk around. I ended up getting a bag of candy from Candy Corner. I about died laughing when I realized that one of the candies was labeled “bannana with green end” which was right next to the “banana”. They are the same candy but as you might guess, one had a green end!!! Such a profound statement.

…………

Sorry this post took longer to post… I feel asleep right after getting back from the mall and didn’t finish this until this morning!! My apologies

Today we are headed to Woven Joy, they make bracelets that get sold in America. They live in a squatter community, squatter is when they don’t own the land they live on, we will be there for the afternoon. For the evening we will be going to the ubber rich part of town. Where is is like going down rodeo drive in Hollywood.

Things to pray for:

1. The four programs we have to put on for the kids.

2. We are being challenged to talk with adults about God not just kids.

3. For the day at contrasting areas of Manila

4. Growth in the Lord as we experience the Philippines together.

5. For getting out of our comfort zones.

On to another day!