Shopping with Chris

My Sister-in-law, Chris, and I have always enjoyed shopping for our kids together. Having kids born a month apart often has us looking for similar sizes and items. When I lived in the states, we would shop for the kids when we were together. We have been known to call up from inside a store to let the other one know about a deal we just found and see if they want one. We have poured over Land's End and LL Bean catalogs and looked at items together on the net from 2 different states. With Vonage, we have even checked out items online together from diffenent countries. Recently, I found myself in a delimma. Emily needs a new swimsuit and I am..well...just slightly picky about her suits. I wanted something flattering and cute that was just right for a pre-teen girl, yet provided plenty of coverage. This is not an easy task even if you live in the US. Add in shopping from around the world and it becomes almost impossible. I looked here, but to no avail so I began catalog shopping. At this same time, Chris was out trying to find her girls a new suit too. She canvased stores looking for suits right for girls who can really no longer can wear kids suits, and are still a little small for ladies suits. Emily has moved into a size 2 or 4 ladies petite clothes in the last year. It is hard for me to believe, but at mid May, swimsuits are already beginning to be scarce on racks and sold out online. Finally, I found what I thought would be the perfect suit for Em. Since, we can't really try it on from 12 times zones away, Chris ordered it and had my niece, Beth try it on. She is the closest to Em's same size, just a little shorter and smaller. Success! So below is Beth in Em's new suit! Chris and I had fun shopping together again. Thanks Chris and LL Bean!!!

On a side note, Will was wanting a new game for his playstation. I told him that I could order it, but if he wanted it, the cost was $10 and he had to pay for it. His response..."How much is $10?....Is it 500 pesos?" His mind already values things by the peso as opposed to the dollar. I am still converting the other way.

Isn't she Lovely?

Last night was the middle school banquet at Faith Academy. It's a chance for the kids to dress up and celebrate the end of the school year. I thought I would share a few pictures of Emily and her friends. I can't believe how old she has gotten this year. Notice her high heels! That was her favorite part. After the banquet the 6th graders had an after party at one of their classmate's house. Just like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight, all the girls changed from their gorgeous dresses back into shorts and T-s for games and snacks. The kids had fun competing in boys against girls at various silly party games. Unfortunately the boys won most events!

Emily at her table at the beginning of the evening

Emily's table companions

This is a non-dating event, but when kids purchase tickets

they can choose where to sit.

Emily's group of friends decided they

didn't want to sit with a bunch of boys.

Weren't Mom and Dad glad?

The Flag of the Philippines

Since this week has been election week in the Philippines, I thought it would be fitting for me to give you some facts of interest about the Filipino Flag.
The white triangle is the distinctive emblem of the KKK. Before you start thinking the Philipines has ties to the US KKK you need to know that KKK stands for the Katipunan, who with a blood compact inspired the Filipinos to rise in revolution against the Spanish.The three stars represent the three geographical island groups of the country: Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao and the unification of separate peoples and cultures into one nation. The eight rays of the sun represent the first eight provinceswhich revolted against Spanish rule.
The significance of the colors: the white triangle stands for equality and fraternity; the blue for peace, truth and justice; and red for patriotism and valor. However, the original Declaration of Independence stated that the three colors were inspired by the American flag in gratitude of the Filipino towards America for help overthrowing Spanish rule. One interesting note on color is that the blue was a navy blue until the reign of Ferdinand Marcos who changed it to the more royal color used today.

The Philippine flag is unique in that it can indicate a state of war. When the red is displayed on top , it means that the Philippines is at war. It was last officially ordered flown with the red stripe up, in December 1941, following the Japanese attack on the Philippines on December 8, 1941.

Email medicine

Our clinic has a close relationship with New Tribes Mission here in the Philippines. One of the ways that we try to help is being available to answer medical questions whether about themselves or about someone in their ministry area. This is always an interesting situation, some of the situations are quite difficult, especially when the person managing them off in the tribe somewhere likely has little, if any medical training.



I thought I would include one of my recent emails from a NTM missionary. The medically trained among us can give a shot at how they would answer. This email had one of the best possible inclusions . . . a picture.



From the email:

We have a little girl in our village who was involved in a truck roll over back on the 22nd of December. It appears that the parents took her to the hospital and she had as much treatment as they could afford. The doctor said that this wound on her head needed skin grafting but they could not afford the cost of the operation. So they just brought her back to the village.



We [the NTM missionary] arrived back into the tribe in mid April. just over a week ago we put her on 250mg amoxicillin t.d.s. for a week and also had the mother applying flammazine once a day to the wound. The photo attached to this email was taken after she had been on the amoxicillin for a week. Prior to starting the antibiotics the wound was very pussy and red and swollen all around it. So after a week on the antibiotics it did look a bit better. So we have continued the antibiotics for another week. The mother is also applying the flammazine twice a day for this coming week. We will check her again this Sunday.



Can you please tell us if we are on the right track as far as treatment goes? Should we continue the antibiotics after she has been on them for two weeks or just stop them and continue with the flammazine? Should that be put on once or twice a day after it has been applied once a day for a week and then twice a day for the following week?



Will the wound just eventually heal up even if it never has skin grafts? It seems a long time to us to still look this open and raw? It is coming up for nearly five months since the accident.Is there anything else we should be doing for her to help it heal up quicker? It appears it is going to scar her little face terribly, but maybe if she grows her hair long that will eventually cover it when she grows older. She is about five years old. Do you think that area will ever grow hair from it again?



Could you also let us know what would be the next best antibiotic to prevent burns getting infected if we have run out of amoxicillin. Is cefalexin or ampicillin the next best choice?



We had a little boy with burns all to his face from hot water come today, but we have run out of amoxicillin and were wondering what other antibiotic would be good to prevent infection of his burns.Looking forward to your reply,

- End of email.

Some Random Pictures

While we haven't had internet, the camera has worked just fine--that is, when I remember to take pictures. I thought I would just share a few pics from our spring.

In April, to celebrate her 12th birthday,

Emily and I had a Mother-Daughter date

for shopping and afternoon Tea

The Philippines is known for her fresh water pearls.

My Birthday gift to Emily-

her first set of "real pearls"

a necklace, bracelet and earrings cost less than $10

Will has been on the elementary puppet ministry team this year.

He has loved doing this!

Maggie tries to beat the heat

Jhun's helpers:

One of our ministry employees, Jhun has been building

a wall around the agricultural lot by the clinic.

These kids love to come out and play on the cement pile

Some shots taken outside the clinic :

This girl's family sells drinks and food out in front on the clinic

Hello faithful

Hello to all of you who still check our blog. We are finally back online! We came back online at the end of last week. We are glad to be back in communication with family and friends. Hopefully I will blog more in the next few days. Today is national elections in the Philippines so we are staying close to home.

Same Song Just Another Verse

Well here I sit in the Faith Academy library, once again checking emails. For no apparent reason we are without phones once again. Our whole area is out. Rumor is they are replacing power poles, but the power seems to be working fine. We have also had no and low water for the last 10 days or so. This is a result of it being hot and dry. We have entered in with a vengance to the hottest time in the PI. So while I miss the internet and the water, I can always check email here and have water trucked in. I am just more than thankful that we do have power. Which is known to have outages during hot season. Imagine July in the South without even a fan! This is the one time of the year we allow ourselves to use with aircon unit in our bedroom. We don't have central air, just a window type unit. Power is so expensive here that we make oursleves survive the warmest nights during the rest of the year with just a fan. It usually isn't too bad, but when the temp of our bedroom climbs to the mid 90's and above a fan just can't cut it. Hope you are enjoying the lovely Spring weather!

An over due Thanks!

I need to apologize to a certain group of kids because I have been remiss in my blogging. Some dear friends from Greenwood occasionally send us local newspapers and church newsletters and bulletins, and other items of interest. In the fall they sent us a newsletter they thought we would be interested in since it involved us. For months this newsletter from our church in S. Carolina has been sitting on my desk waiting to be scanned. Unfortunately that means things got stacked on top of it and I kept putting it off. It is too important though to let it go by completely unnoticed.



Last summer the kids at South Main Street Baptist church in Greenwood decided they wanted to do something for missions and for their friends Emily and Will in particular. This was not a parent or leadership driven thing, but the kids themselves deciding to do something to make a difference. So in August, as school was just getting started, they held a talent show to raise money to support our work here. I am told it was an exciting evening (I'm still waiting for the video tape, Susan) full of great acts by the kids. I hate we missed seeing the show.

We want to say thank you to the kids at South Main Street Baptist Church.

You truly are a group of SUPER KIDS!

Emily and Will miss you guys so much!

A forgotten Helper

I would like to add something to Allan's blog below about the clinic update. This project was truly a family affair.- including our guests. Down toward the bottom there are 2 pictures of our "crash cart". This project was given to my dad when he was here.

Thanks for the great paint job, Dad!

Clinic additions

Ginger has been so faithful to post about our family and personal experiences during the past few months. I, however, have been completely remiss in posting about the clinic and our ministry. A project that I have been working on for some months is expanding the clinic's capabilities and organization. We have been so fortunate to receive modern supplies and equipment. To put this new equipment into daily use required some rearranging and additions to our clinic.

Here is what we started with ...















While incorporating the new equipment, we tried to improve the overall "flow" to place our most used medicines and supplies in easily accessible areas. To do this we first disassembled most of the supplies and grouped items by category and frequency of use. Emily was a big help during her school breaks. She cleaned some of the dirty equipment and helped sort and re-package medicines.















Then I designed a set of cabinets that allowed some of our emergency and surgical supplies to be near the patient treatment area. These cabinets were custom built by another ministry that trains Filipinos in cabinetry and woodworking.

Then came the task of reassembling the clinic.
Our EKG now sits on a slide-out tray (shown covered here) which allows quick and easy access to the patient laying on the exam table.

Ginger help fill the cabinets with our new "kits". The plan was that each kit would be used for a certain event, such as IV starts, suturing, eye exam, minor surgery, wound dressing. It is a work in progress and as we try new things our plans and layout should be able to adapt easily.

We also converted an old hospital medicine cart into a new "crash cart" which contains alot of our emergency medicines, a new cardiac monitor and defibrillator , IV supplies and portable oxygen.

The Last Year of Childhood

Last Sunday we hit the end of an era. Emily turned 12! It's her last year of childhood before becoming the dreaded.....teenager. We had a really nice day as a family. After church we met our neighbors from the fall for lunch at the restaurant of Emily's choice. I would like to tell you her choice was some truly exotic restaurant that had cool, uniquly Filipino food, but alas we are a little boring and she chose to go to Chili's (are you jealous Aunt Chris?) Our meal took a while and we enjoyed talking and visiting with our friends. If you know Em, you probably won't be surprised that she really loves for the waiters to sing to her on her birthday. The waiters at Chili's out did themselves with tamborines, banging metal glasses, other noise makers and lots of loud singing. Will doesn't like it and hid under the table as soon as her heard them coming.


We returned home for a relaxing rest of the day. We watched a movie, Eragon, just hung out together, and had cake. Of course there were gifts too. I had my Mom mail out a couple things from the states. Emily has become enamoured of Nascar in the last year. Her favorite driver is Matt Kenseth who is actually related to the Nelsens. She got a Matt Kenseth hat, night shirt, and of all things a toothbrush (because it was a dollar and didn't add any more to the shipping) She has told everyone she is so excited about brushing her teeth. What does that mean she's been doing for the last 11 or so years?

Happy 12th Birthday Emily!

We Love you!

Splish Splash

If you are a frequent reader of our blog, you might remember that Faith built a new pool that a little over a year ago. The pool was designed to be a competition pool and so in January of this year, the first ever Faith Academy Swim Team began. Will and Emily both love to swim and have been like little fish since they were young, so they were quite excited to join. They can now be found after school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays swimming laps. They both really love it. The school hoped to have 10 or so kids come out for the team. They thought they would have 2 or 3 lanes designated for swim team and the rest of the pool for community swim. The response though has been huge, more than they could have hoped for, and continues to grow. The swim team now commandeers the whole pool from 2-3:30 and there is very little room to spare--even for all of the swimmers. There are about 15 participants in the middle school alone. The elementary group is even larger.

So today the kids (and of course Allan and I) headed off across town to Brent International School for their first swim meet. They really enjoyed it. Emily likes to say, "I didn't lose a single race." That's just her optimistic way of saying she never came in last place. Having only been practicing for a couple months, even our fastest swimmers were not in the top 5 or 6 of any event. It was a good experience and I look forward to seeing how much they improve at the next meet on April 21.

We have become quite the athletic family lately with swimming and tennis. I have now joined the ranks of the hip FTP (Future Tennis Players) at Faith. I am taking tennis lessons with the 2 other moms we went with to Boracay. Soon Em and I will have to have a mother/daughter match up. I just need to practice a bit more so I'm not stomped too badly.

Below are some picture taken at the meet today against some of the other international schools and Filipino swim clubs. The pool was covered so some of the pictures are a little dark.

Go Swimming Vanguards from FASC!
(Faith Academy Swim Club)

Emily getting ready to swim the breast stroke

Em's neck n neck on the first length.

She's in the closest left lane.

Close to the finish line

Will on the blocks

Will swimming his favorite stroke: Breaststroke

Will touches the wall in the Freestyle

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles---Spring Break 2007

Last week was March Break for Faith Academy. I always refer to it as Spring Break, but that's not right since we have no Spring and the summer is beginning. During the break, we took a trip with 2 other families to the Island of Boracay, about halfway down the chain of islands of the Philippines. This blog should actually be called Planes, Trikes, Boats, and Automobiles because those are the modes of transportation we took to reach our destination. After driving to the domestic airport we had a 35 minute flight from Manila to Kalibo on the island of Panay. We then hired a van to drive us 1 1/2 hours to the Jetty port in Caticlan. This was a gorgeous drive along the rural coastline of Panay. The most common comment was--"Why do so many people move to Manila? This is beautiful!" The scenery was everything you would expect an island in the tropics to look like. After reaching Caticlan, we took a banka, which is a type of boat over to the small island of Boracay. Once there it was a short Jeepney ride to near our hotel. The roads in Boracay don't go all the way down to the beaches or the resorts. The road ends about 200-300 yards before the beach. This being the Philippines, we had porters to take care of our luggage as we walked down the path to the beach and then along the beachfront path to our hotel.

The lack of roads makes you feel like you are truly in a tropical paradise. The beach is wonderful, filled with Coconut trees that provide shade during the morning and crystal clear water. The evenings were my favorite time though. We faced west and every night about 5:30 we would all gather to watch the sunset over the ocean. Truly spectacular! It was a great week filled with swimming, snorkling, sailing, sand castles, and soccer. Our friend Matt likes to use the phrase-"only Millionaires and Missionaries get to visit exotic destinations like this." Great thing is we didn't need to be millionaires to afford to go here. If you want to see more pictures of our trip you can check them out on our web page at: http://philippinemission.com/boracay.html

Emily and Megan enjoy the cool water

Emily and Allan Snorkling

Sailing at Sunset

Cost:$12

Emily took this sunset picture!

Help

If we have veternarians among our readers, I would greatly appreciate the chance to consult with you about our dog. Email me using:
http://philippinemission.com/contactus.html

Scooterin'

Here are a few pics of the family that I took on Saturday. The kids were on their scooters in front of our house. We have a nice hill there and they enjoyed trying to make skid marks. Maggie also got into the action. She liked racing the kids up and down the street---she won!

Peace, baby

Will checks out his skid mark

Run Maggie run

"Look what I found!"Sitting in front of our house