Typhoon, flooding and now....

Earthquakes! Last night Allan and I experienced another phenomenon of living in the Philippines. We had just gotten into bed and turned out the lights when the bed began to jiggle. We both had the same thought—“what is he (she) doing over there?” Allan though noticed the windows were also rattling. After our bed quit doing a jig, he asked me; “did you do that or was that an earthquake?” Once we established that both of us had been lying still, we concluded that it had been an earthquake. Our deduction was helped by the fact that this wasn’t the first one of the evening. Earlier, we had been at a concert and afterwards our friends asked us if we felt the quake. Crazy us, we thought it was just vibrations from the music. The Philippines is a part of the Pacific Ring of Fire; a place where volcanic and earthquake activity are great. The epicenter of these quakes (there have now been 5) is an island just south of here called Marinduque where the quakes have been registering just above 5 on the Richter scale. They have been felt at about intensity 4 in Manila. So far there has been no damage reported. I am not sure how many miles or kilometers it is from here to Marinduque, but you can see the island on the map below. We are close to the big star by Manila and the red arrow points to the small island just south of our big island of Luzon. There have been other quakes in our time here, but they have only happened at night and we slept through them.

More Typhoon Pictures

Here are a few more pictures from the Typhoon taken by our new neighbors:

Picture taken from the Nelsen's balcony during the storm

Trees and Bamboo blowing during the wind

A billboard fallen on a building

Signs and trees on the road to school

How sweet it is

Ahh, we have water. Well we have had water since Tuesday actually, but we now have full water pressure. Yesterday, I had a warm shower for the first time in over 2 weeks. Since we had been off swimming with the kids and it was overcast and cool, I was a little cold...well ok so cold isn't really the right word, but it's all relative. I was cooler than normal I guess. It was so refreshing! In hot season there were times I never even turned the hot water on in the shower, but usually I like to at least start with a little warmth. When it is completely cold, it is a shock to my system. Allan had actually gotten a hot shower earlier in the week, but everytime I headed off to the shower the water pressure was not enough to get the water hot. We have a different hot water system than we were familiar with. Our water heater is gas, but instead of having a big tank filled with water and kept hot, our heater passes the water through coils and heats it as it's used, similar to a radiator. While the down side is that you have to have enough water pressure to trigger the heater and keep it heating, the good news is that as long as we have propane in our tank, no one can use all the hot water! This is important since Emily really enjoys nice long showers and baths. You will have to forgive the fact that I don't have a picture of my shower to go along with this blog. Since I love to attach pictures, here's two of Emily taken by some friends recently at lunch after church.

Just a couple pictures:

Here are a couple pictures we took yesterday while out driving. I still hope to get the ones our neighbor took during the typhoon and just after. The clinic now has power, but we are still without water. Hopefully it will be restored by tomorrow.

So many houses have had roofs blown off.

Manila loves huge steel Billboards. Unfortunately, these caused tremendous damage. The winds toppled them onto houses, cars and people. It was particularly damaging to the many Squatter areas the are built beneath them. Fortunately this one fell into an empty field. So much devastation was caused by these, that the President is calling for a limiting or ban of these type of billboards.

Pray for our city

Please continue to pray for our area. Just days after a category 4 Typhoon caused significant damage around our island, torrential rains from another tropical depression have produced severe flooding. This past Monday, strong rains produced rapid and deadly flooding around Antipolo (the city where our clinic and houses are located). Six people drowned in these floods and the already damaged houses took another beating from the flood water. One of the national volunteers in our clinic had neck high flooding in her home. This dear friend is not a wealthy Filipino. Most families here live day to day and paycheck to paycheck, so there is not much money to replace the things that were lost.

After Monday night's heavy downpour and flooding, things look worse than they did over the weekend. Many trees, concrete power poles, signs, roofs, sheet metal, and other debris litter the roads and ground as well as thick layers of mud. Often the air is filled with smoke as people try to burn the leaves, sticks and debris swept from homes, yards, and roads. Many of our friends and fellow missionaries are still with out power, water, and phone. Some of them had their utilities restored, only to lose them again on Monday night.

Our family is doing well. We currently have power but no water service. The clinic remains without power or water. We continue to see patients but some services are limited without power. (Reading a x-ray by holding it up to the sun-lit window is not the ideal method taught to physicians). Many of our lab tests are also limited by lack of power.

Below are a few pictures we took on our street today. These pictures do not show too much destruction, but they give you an idea of what things look like here.

Mud and downed power lines in front of the clinic

Downed Cement power pole and trees

Xangsane

Well, we have survived our second typhoon. Last Thursday, the strongest typhoon in 11 years passed over us. It entered our island of Luzon as a catagory 4 typhoon. I am not sure what strength it was when it finally got to our location since we were out of communication by that time. It was actually a little surreal. After days of rain last week, we woke up Thursday morning to a cold breeze blowing through our windows and temps around 73. It was actually really nice. At 9 am the power was shut off as the rains began and by 10:30 we were in the midst of heavy rains and high winds. It's kind of funny that in the US we would have evacuated, but here, being an island, there is not really any place to evacuate. So we sat as a family on our screen porch and watched the weather rage. Since the storm was coming from the front of our house, we were safe sitting in the back. Thankfully the storm moved through quickly and after about 4 hours it was all over. Since we had no power or lines of communication, we kept thinking we must be in the eye, but by nightfall we realized things were over. We were without power and water from Thursday until Saturday, but if you read our blog this summer, you will remember that we have dealt with this before. Allan did manage to get our generator running for a few hours and that held the stuff in the refridgerator. As for personal damage, we had some minor flooding in our kitchen. With the gusting winds, all the seals around our kitchen windows and doors leaked, but since we have marble floors and cement walls there was no damage inside. The trees in the yard and across the ravine are somewhat stripped, but no real damage to the 2 houses or the clinic. Unfortunately, this was not the case in other places. Over 100 people are currently reported as having died, most from flooding and landslides. This number will probably continue to rise in coming days. Also many areas are still with out power or water. Our neighbor has taken some pictures of the damage around our area and I hope to post them here in the next few days.
The kids have enjoyed their time off from school. They had just gone to bed Wednesday night when we got the word that school was canceled for Thursday. I guess it was kind of like having a snow day. They asked if they could please get up and stay up late. Emily had wanted to stay up and watch her first Nascar race. She has been interested in racing since watching "Herbie, Fully Loaded" and "Cars". She stayed up until 11 watching a replay of the race in Delaware, cheering on the Nelsen's cousin who is a Nascar driver. It was very exciting as he was in the lead most of the race, but lost in the last lap when he ran out of gas. The rest of their 4 day holiday was spent playing board games and outside games like Capture the Flag with the 3 kids next door. When power was finally restored, I had to do a couple loads of wet, stinky, muddy clothes from all their days of hard play. They headed off to school this morning. Power had yet to be restored, but the school has generators to provide a limited amount of lights for the day. I am not sure the kids were ready to return to school this morning. I think they would have liked a few more days to goof off. They will get them though beginning Thursday when they start October break. School closes down in Oct. and April for a week and a half to allow boarders to return home and visit their families.

A picture is worth a thousand words

This big seller in Taiwan has come to the Philippines. Most of the "tray cover" is written in English, however, note down in the left bottom corner is the Taglish (Tagolog + English) version of McDonald's slogan "I'm loving it"

Do I have 2 heads?

When I look in the mirror, I don't see a particularly odd looking person looking back at me. I consider myself about as average as average gets. However, to Filipino children who are being seen at our clinic, I must appear equivalent to someone with 2 heads. While all gawk at me, I've found they do so in very different ways.

The highly timid and shy ones will just grab onto their parent and stare with wide-eyes locked onto my every move ( I pray for them: that their eyes won't actually pop out of their heads as they appear to be on the verge of doing). The braver sort will venture a touch of the strange being in front of them. The most common touch is to sneak a hand down to my leg (usually as I am examining their other family members) and graze the hairs on my leg. I guess they think that I can't feel that. I can understand the fascination here. Filipinos don't have alot of body hair and certainly not blonde hair so sneaking a feel of this strange stuff is completely understandable. The most aggressive ones have developed a new tactic - to poke at me as if taunting a wild animal pinned in a cage. I had to draw the line at this one because I found it disrepectful (although I must admit that this interpretation is highly influenced by my "American-ness").

So when you visit the clinic (and you are welcome anytime) be prepared for some inquisitive probes, rubs, and maybe even a poke.

Ginger said that I had to clearly state that it was me who wrote this so everyone would not think she is the one with the hairy legs --because she shaves her legs (most of the time).

"It's the Holiday Season..."

Do you ever notice that a lot of my blog titles and blogs have parts of songs in them? I always seem to have some song running through my head and often these are triggered by events around me. My best friend, Amy, doesn't realize that when she has called or we talk about her, either Allan or myself break into the song..."Amy, what you wanna do?..." by Pure Prairie League(now there's a blast from the 70's). Well this weekend there are other songs running around in my brain and I wish they would get out. In case you aren't aware, it's a -ber month. No, that doesn't mean things are turning colder here in the Philippines. It means that the months ending in -ber are official Christmas months. So September is the kick off to Christmas. Friday afternoon after picking the kids up from school, we ran by the grocery store to get 2 things. We walked in the store to the sounds of "The most wonderful time of the year" followed by "Feliz Navidad". Emily groaned and asked, "Already?" Our tv stations are playing the annual Christmas movies. At the Antipolo, Civic Center the Christmas Carnival has begun setting up. The malls have begun decorating and by October everything will be in full swing. I guess it's fitting then that I did some of my Christmas shopping online this week. It's not that I am already in the Christmas frame of mind, but my parents are coming at the beginning of November and the kids want a few things that are either only found in the US or much cheaper there. So let me be the first to greet you with a "Merry Christmas!"

Clinic Tour; part 2

This is a continuation of a blog from a couple of weeks ago that is taking you on a tour of our clinic. In the first part I showed the waiting room and the first stop along the way to seeing the doctor--the nurses station, where we take vital signs. After one of our staff takes your vital signs, (hopefully if you are ever a patient, school will be out and you will be taken care of by the great nursing team of Ginger and Emily) our patients return to the waiting room and wait for the doctor. In our clinic we don't stand on ceremony so most often the dr. calls his own patient. It is then that our patients go to the exam room. It is in the other half of the room where we take vital signs and consists of a 10 foot long table and a lot of chairs.

Seeing the doctor

Dr. Allan explains how to take the medicine

Getting a second opinion

Stats

For the past year, Ginger and I have been trying to write about our everyday experiences in missionary service (OK, I admit it, Ginger does most of the writing but those who know us well already predicted that would be the case). Writing these takes a good bit of time and effort so when we first started I decided to put a site meter on our website that would keep certain statistics on who visits. Would you have guessed a former electrical engineer would be interested in the statistics?

After 1 year, here are some of our stats from the blog (not including Philippine Mission website):

1514 total visits to our blog
57 visitors this past week
8 visitors per day average
2 minutes 25 seconds average time each visitor spends on site
1.5 page views per visitor
2350 total page views
Not surprisingly, most visitors are from the U.S.

Here are the stats from the Philippine Mission website:
1856 Total page views
Other than the main index page, most people visited our photos with 190 views of "Family Fun" and 109 views of "New Tribes"

We appreciate those who take enough interest in our lives and our ministry to read our stories. Thanks so much for your encouragement to us that these numbers represent.

---> Add on: Thinking of numbers, reminded me that:
111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,321
Funny, huh? (or maybe, not)

Jomar

I received an email this weekend that asked if we were without phones once again. I realize my blogging and emailing has been sparse recently, but it is not due to phone or power related issues. I have been in charge of a bazaar at the kids' school and it has taken up a lot of my computer time in recent weeks contacting vendors and making preparations. The bazaar- called "Shoppers' Day" is a bi-annual event for the missionary community. All the soccer teams play a game against our biggest rival- the International School of Manila. Outside, there is food and fun put on by the Student Council, similar to a school carnival. In the gym is the bazaar with 70-80 vendors coming to sell Filipino Handicrafts(this is the part I was responsible for). It is a big event and a great time of fellowship for the missionary community. Since the event was this past Saturday, things are returning to normal for me this morning.

I also returned to the clinic this morning for the first time in many weeks. We have had two 4th year nursing students here from the States and so I was replaced in my job at the clinic by them. This left me free to take care of Shoppers' Day, but it was great to be back working with Allan and Ling and seeing patients. We saw lots of kids this morning and they are always my favorites. There was one 3 or 4 year old boy who came with his baby sister. He really wanted to be the patient though. He wanted me to check all of his vital signs and everytime I went out to the waiting room to call a patient he said "Hey, ako, ako", which means me, me. He also kept wanting to pat me on the back. He was so cute and had a great big smile, but as you can see, when I tried to take his picture he refused to smile. (pardon the blurriness, but I was having camera problems this morning)

As cute as that little boy is, he isn't the one that stole my heart this morning though. Jomar is a 9 year old boy who began coming to the clinic in July for epilepsy. I could tell when he climbed on the scale this morning that something wasn't right with his mannerisms and his eyes. As I took his vital signs, I began to wonder if he was mentally retarded. Some of the things he did reminded me so much of my cousin Jenny who is MR. He seemed a little shy at first, but he soon warmed up. When Allan shined the light into his eyes he got so tickled that he giggled through out the rest of the exam. As Allan went to fill his meds, Jomar and I began making goofy eyes at each other. After a few minutes, he began saying "Rain, Rain go away, sa (tagalog word) another day" in perfect English over and over. He was such a delight. What his dad then told Ling and I, broke my heart. Jomar had been perfectly normal until he was 7 years old. He was a bright boy and in school, but one day he hit his head and he has been having seizures ever since. His seizures became so frequent that his parents began schooling him at home. He is now very developmentally delayed. For the last 2 months, he has been on some medicine that was part of the donation from that US hospital that closed. His seizures have dropped from 1 or more a day to only 1 a week. I really wanted to take a good picture of him this morning, but my camera still wouldn't cooperate. He gave some great poses, but unfortunately they were blurry. So this is the best shot I have of him and his dad. We see so many single mother families here, that it is great to see a dad care so much for his son. Would you join us in praying for Jomar and his family? We only have about 7 weeks worth of seizure meds left for him and are hoping the med is available here for us to purchase more.


Allan's two cents: For the past few months the clinic has been well stocked with just about any medicine a primary care doctor could ask for. This abundance was due to the closure of a hospital in the U.S. and the medicines that were given from its stock. These are top-of-line type drugs that I was trained to use during residency in the States. It has been good to be able to provide some of the best medications (that I am familiar with) for certain problems. However, we are now starting to deplete some of the most heavily needed medications, such as those for chronic lung problems, which requires us to switch to second-line or even "distinctly alternative" choices. Please pray for us as I am learning and adapting to using medicines that may not even be available in the U.S.

The Clinic

For those of you who haven't had the priviledge of visiting our clinic (Ok so that is most of you) I thought I would post a few pictures so you can get an idea of what things look like. This will probably be a series of blogs over the next few weeks. Some of these pictures were taken the first time we were here and have some of the members of last years Village Health Training class.

The outside of the clinic

a patient, Pastor Buddy, Cindy, and Will in the waiting room

Taking vitals

Nurse Emily gets ready for a patient.
She can now weigh patients, take their temp, and heart rate
all that's left is blood pressure

Next time....seeing the doc

Oops--did I say that!

I remember when the kids were preschoolers we used to sing a song that went.."Oh be careful little mouth what you say. Oh be careful little mouth what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in love. Oh be careful little mouth what you say." This song is especially true when living in a different culture and learning a foreign language. Since Cindy returned to the States for furlough, I have been leading a Bible Study she has on Saturday mornings with 5 girls from the neighborhood. I have really enjoyed it and will be sad to let it go when she comes back. Recently, one of the girls had to bring her brother with her. He was about Will's age and had a great time exploring the yard and playing with Will's Lightsaber. As we were having merianda (which is a Tagalog word for a snack that is the equivalent of British Tea, or Kenyan Chai Time), I asked him a question. I started by calling his name. "Baboy..." Now to understand this you need to know that in the Philippines most people do not go by their given name, they go by nicknames. His name is David, but I didn't call him David. I called his nickname. Elena, the Nelsen's helper, who is there to help cross the language barrier if needed, asked me "What did you call him?" "Uuuhhh, the same thing you've been calling him. Isn't that his nickname?" Well, it's not exactly. His name is Boboy. Baboy is a pig. I was really embarassed and I apologized a lot. He was a good sport and took it in stride. He started oinking around the kitchen. His sister Diane says he gets called that on purpose sometimes and he never minds. I felt really bad though. Allan and I did laugh about it later. Ah the culturally sensitive missionary--that's me!
Blunders aside, our Tagalog has come far in a year, but obviously not quite far enough. Allan is able to get by in the clinic now because he asks the same questions over and over and the responses are similar. We can speak and understand very basic conversation, but often it seems so fast and we sound like 2 year olds. We keep pushing on. We have a new tool to help us. Rosetta Stone is a great computer language program used by the military, peace corps, homeschoolers and others to teach 40 or so languages by immersion. They just recently added Level 1 Tagalog so we have decided to review from the beginning with that. It is good so far.

On another language funny note, Filipinos think our dog has a really strange name. They pronounce WAGs -"Waug". This sounds the same as the contraction for the word Huwag which means "Don't". I actually think it is kind of fitting and we have taken to sometimes saying to him Huwag Waug. When delivery men or others who don't know us, stop by the house, they often ask our helper, Dhel, why our dog is named don't. They also usually think the Nelsen's dog, Bonnie, is named Bunny.

Happy Anniversary and Welcome back to School!

I have been so remiss in my blogging since we have returned to the land of communication. I think I just got out of the habit. Also it has been a busy couple of weeks. It is now official---as of July 30th, we have been here one year! It is weird to think we haven't stepped on American soil or seen our family in over 365 days. With the vonage phone it doesn't seem that long. Our anniversary passed almost unnoticed amid the breaking of the hot water heater and a major computer problem. I think after the month of July, the house could fall down and we wouldn't be too shocked.

Just 3 days after our anniversary, Emily started middle school. She was very anxious about this event. She kept telling me she thought she was coming down with something and couldn't start school. Our drive to school that morning was a little tense for Em. We parked and I walked Will to his class. As I headed back across the campus, there sat all the new 6th graders on a stone wall looking a little intimidated and scared. This same group of kids would come running out much more relaxed at the end of the school day. Emily's first words--"It was awesome!" She loves middle school. She likes having a locker and changing classes and having different kids in her classes. While she is not a big fan of PE, she loves going to the locker room to change into her PE uniform and the things that go along with that. Twice a week in middle school PE, they strap on a pulse monitor and run a mile. Emily likes this because they can bring a portable Cd player or MP3 player to listen to while they run. I thought they would run around the soccer field 5 times, but no, they run the campus which is quite steep and hilly.

Will is enjoying 4th grade and was glad his best friend from last year is once again in his class. Most of his other friends are in the other class though. He has made friends with a new boy in his class that he really likes. I think he misses seeing Emily at lunch and on the playground. Since we homeschooled in the states, this is the first time they have not been in the same school. After only missing one day of school last year to go to immigration, he has already missed a day this year. We had flash backs to July as he once again ran a fever yesterday and had to stay home. This was very distressing to him and he was glad to go back this morning. I am glad he likes school. I have no idea what time he got up this morning, but he came be-bopping into my room at 5:45 when the alarm went off and he was already dressed and fed. He was quite peppy and kept singing and being silly. This drove his sister nuts. She is not a morning person. It looks to be a good school year!

Nasaan sila Gilmers? or Where are the Gilmer's?

For those of you who are faithful to read our blog, you probably wonder if we have fallen off the island during the last month. Well at times it has seemed like it. The last month has been crazy for us. July is the official beginning of rainy season and it has begun with a vengeance. We started the month with 2 typhoons, followed by a 3rd one this last week. Since the rains began the first week of the month, it has rained every day. Most days it has rained all day. The first typhoon knocked out the phone lines, which were then stolen, and we were without phone service for over 2 weeks. One Saturday morning though, the lines were replaced and we had phone and internet again...for less than 24 hours. The phone lines were cut and stolen again that night, so we were once again phoneless until today. Beside no phone we have also spent the last 3 days without power. Thankfully everything seems to be up and running now, but who knows when the weather will knock it out again.

When the phone lines are down, we can get out and check our email at internet cafes. Unfortunately during the first week of no phone service, a virus with a high fever swept through the family beginning with Will and ending with Allan. Each of us was really sick for 10 days to 2 weeks. So we haven't gotten out much, Emily and I still have some residual cough and congestion.

Besides illness to fill our dreary, rainy days, we have launched a war against a platoon of rats that invade our home each night. In the states we one time had a little mouse in the house. We have never had rats--yuck! The rats have eaten holes in the screens and come inside. At first it was just in the kitchen windows, but when we started leaving those closed they came in through any window, including our bedroom--eeeewww! For 2 weeks each night before bed, Allan would set up his poisons and traps. We soon caught our first rat in a trap. Will arrived in our bed one morning about 6 to tell us there was the biggest rat we had ever seen dead on the kitchen floor. He was right! It was bigger than a guinea pig--double yuck! I was thankful Allan saw it as a man's job to clean it up. The Nelsen's dachsund Bonnie has killed one in the yard. Their dog Shila killed one behind our dryer. And not to be out done, WAGs killed one in the kitchen last week. Hopefully the others (if there are any) are dying off in their nest somewhere after they have eaten the poison packets left around the house. Along with the rats we have also had problems with ticks in the house and our usual collection of lizards. The lizard population has been diminished though with the sticky traps set out for the rats. Ah the joys of living overseas! I am sure my mother is really looking forward to being here with us this fall. She doesn't like lizards in the house and I can only imagine what she thinks of rats.

We are glad to see July winding down and hope August is a better month for us. School begins next Wednesday and Will is ready to go. Emily is a little apprehensive about starting middle school. On another good note, the missionaries, who are renting the Nelsen's house while they are on furlough, arrived this week. They have 3 kids. The younger 2 are close to our kids ages. One is a girl Will's age and a boy a year older than Em. The 4 of them have lived in the yard, running and playing with WAGs and their dog. It has been wonderful for Emily and Will to have kids right here. Emily and Megan have enjoyed doing girly things. While, Will and Mark have played Monopoly this morning and are now playing Stratego. We are enjoying having neighbors again after 2 months of the house next door being empty.

The great thing about the rainy weather has been that our temps have been cooler. Our highs have been between 80 and 82 with the nights getting down as low as 74. While to some of you that may still seem like summer, after living with summer for 365 days, we like the lower 80s and upper 70s. The kids have been wearing their long pants pjs to bed at night. We didn't even miss our fans when the power was out.

So here is the final count

rats killed-4
days with rain--24 and counting
days without phone-23
days without power-3
days with cooler weather-priceless!

Will's new Swimsuit

Ok for those of you who don't want to enjoy another of my shopping experiences here in the PI then this isn't the blog for you. First a little background info--About 3 summers ago, Will began wearing rash guards when he went swimming. My cousin Susan introduced them to me when we were at Gulf Shores. Will was so skinny that he had a hard time staying warm in the water and my cousin said this might help. Apparently rash guards are pretty popluar in New England where the water is a lot cooler. It really helped, Will loved it and we quickly learned the added benefit of protecting his pale white skin from the sun.

Yesterday, I went to our local grocery store which is kind of like a mini-Walmart (emphasis on mini). I was buying a few groceries and some toiletry items for the kids to take to a summer camp for MKs next week. While there I decided to see if they had anything that Will could wear for pjs since his are all getting a little too small. As I walked toward the back of the kids clothing section, I was stopped by an outfit hanging there that I knew I had seen before. It was a shirt, bathing suit trunks, and flip flops all packaged together. The brand name--Sun 'n' Sand. I knew this was a Walmart brand. I also knew these were not Filipino swim trunks because they had a liner inside and boy's bathing suits here are made just like shorts. There was a whole rack of boys swimsuits and tees that were made in the Philippines for Walmart, along with some Op suits that came with rash guards. I was so excited. I of course bought Will a new suit and shirt. Later that afternoon we went to the pool where I saw 2 other families who had also discovered my find. Allan thinks we all seem a little too excited about finding American bathing suits, but it is more than that. It is like finding a piece of home. I am sure he would feel the same way if we were driving down the street and stumbled across a Guthries or a Zaxby's.

Here is the outfit that stopped me at Shopwise. It is listed for sale at the Walmart website.

Here is Will in his new suit.
The bottoms are a little big (surprise),

but he already had 2 others that match the shirt

Goodbyes

Time has slipped up on me and I just realized I haven't blogged in 2 weeks. I have been enjoying the kids being out of school and we have been working on our latest newsletter so I guess I haven't really thought about blogging. It is hard to believe that this time last year we were in the midst of saying goodbye to family friends. Unfortunately, that is a process that happens over and over again for the missionary. We have just recently had to say a short goodbye to our ministry partners. Scott and Cindy have returned to the US on furlough until at least January, maybe a year. Allan is now "in charge" at the clinic. The clinic is quieter and so is our house. The Nelsen's live about 10 feet from us so we are used to having someone always around. We really notice their absence at night when their house remains dark and no one pops by for a visit. At the end of July, we will once again have neighbors when another missionary family moves in until the Nelsen's return. The kids are looking forward to having kids their age from school to play with in the yard.

Besides saying goodbye to the Nelsen's and other families heading home for a year furlough, the kids especially have had a hard time saying goodbye to kids who are moving on--either back to their passport countries or on other fields of service. This year at Faith there seemed to be a higher proportion of kids who would not be returning than in the past. Emily and Will both made good friends this year who will not return. Emily's grade was particularly hit hard as almost a 4th left the Philippines for good. Making new friends and then having them move on was one of the things we knew was tough about missionary life.

Emily's new friend Katie who has left the Philippines for the US

Happy Anniversary!

Today Allan and I celebrated 15 years of marriage. We left the kids home and went out for a nice lunch at one of our favorite Filipino restaurants--a little place that serves American food called TGIFridays. We enjoyed one of Allan's favorite American foods- baby back ribs! This seems fitting since we spent our honeymoon in Gatlinburg, TN and ate alot of ribs that week. It was a yummy meal and we enjoyed spending time together. We have gotten to spend more time together in the last year than in any other year of our marriage.



TGIFridays at Sta. Lucia, Philippines







The restaurant we went to today is near the Marikina River. When most people who were born before 1975 think of the Philippines, they remember the tv images of the closet of Imelda Marcos and all those shoes. Marikina is the shoe making district of the Philippines and they pay tribute to Imelda with a shoe museum that contains about 250 pairs of her shoes. In the middle of the Marikina River is a barge with a large high heeled shoe.

Across the Marikina River, near the big shoe is a monument to the of history Marikina. Marikina was one of the largest private haciendas in the Philippines during the Spanish colonization. Its residents were comprised mostly of farmers. These farmers were quite productive allowing each family to own more than two carabaos. During that time, if you possessed several carabaos you would be considered really rich. This herd of 28 stone carabaos follows the old path taken by the carabaos from their owner's homes to the fields as a reminder that Marikina was once abundant farmland. I am not sure why one of them is white.

A Road Trip

There are some advantages to living in the Philippines that we didn't have in the US. One thing we rarely did when we lived in the states was go to the movies. It is just too expensive. Here we can go see a movie for under $2 a person. So it is a nice treat to see a movie. It is also one of the few places you feel cold and might need a sweater because they set the air conditioning so low.
Today after church we went to see the new Disney Pixar movie, Cars. It was like a little slice of America to fill our senses. If you haven't seen it, the movie itself is gorgeous. The animation is almost realistic. The music is fun and it is a great flick to see on the big screen. The message that others are more important than fame and money was a great one for the kids too. Will loved it too! He loved the cars and the fact that "nothing jumps out at you."
Early on in the movie the main character drives from somewhere down south to California on I-40. Allan and I both sighed and enjoyed the sight of cars moving across the American landscape at a decent pace. We just don't see much--well actually any, of the open road. Driving has definately been one of the biggest adjustments for us. For those of you who live in a big city and spend time sitting in traffic, maybe you can relate a little. In the places we have lived in recent years we had to make sure we didn't go too fast, not so here.
It was also neat to hear the Filipino family behind us explain or try to figure out some of of the American idiomatic expressions. At one point, one character states--"I having as much fun as a tornado in a trailer park." It was a comment much puzzled on by the parents behind us. I guess so since the Philippines has neither tornados or trailer parks.
So I highly recommend Cars if you are looking for a little slice of nostalgia. We enjoyed being transported back to the US via the sights along Route 66!