Teacher's Appreciation...

Well, the school year is coming to a close. There are only 2 more days left of classes, and then students start their exams. Wow! We will be leaving the Philippines in 13 days! I can't believe it! How time flies... It's so bitter/sweet, as is most transitions in life...

On Saturday the students prepared a teacher's appreciation dinner for all the MICA teachers and their spouses. The weird part is that the student council was in charge of organizing it, and I, being the student council advisor, am in charge to oversee their events. Well, this is the one event I did not know anything about. They wanted it to be a surprise for me. They really did a great job! I was very impressed! We had it at the SIL office building, which is right next to MICA. They had decorated one of the rooms and it looked great! They served us finger foods through out the night, gave each of us a card from all the students and then the teachers and students played a game together. It was a great night!

The decorated the whole room with paintings, messages, couches, lamps, rugs... It looked great!

The students served us finger foods.. there were about 8 different courses! We were stuffed by the end.

Enjoying the game!

We played a game called Mexican charades. Basically where you act out a scene and someone has to guess what you are acting... Here Rob is being a student in class who really has to go to the bathroom. It was really funny! (He's going to LOVE that I posted this picture of him!)
Here are the teachers (plus their spouses)

Trip to the Market

The first time I went to the market here, I only had my little camera. I have been wanting to go back just to take pictures with my SLR camera and yesterday I got the opportunity. Since we have a friend in town from NOLA, we asked if he would like the cultural experience and he did! Here are some pics I took:

The Meat section, oh the smell... yes, these are pigs feet hanging!

Of course we are quite the specticle, especially a white person with a camera. These two cute guys wanted me to take their pictures with their ducklings! So cute!

Dried Fish!

Of course, lots of fresh veggies!

This is how they sell soy sauce, cooking oil, etc.

A Familiar Face

Some of you might recognise this face! Yes, Dan is here in Davao! For those of you who don't know, Dan is a friend of ours from church back in NOLA. It is so weird to have someone here from "our other life" in the States. It is fun to show him around a little and have him meet some of our students! Last week, the student council organized a water day (the reason Rob is wet in the picture) and Dan was able to join us for awhile and meet some of our students. Dan is here with a group of people teaching Christian doctors how to take care of the "whole person": Taking care of not just their physical needs, but also their spiritual needs.

Last night we were able to join his group at a local hospital where they visited the patients, shared the gospel, and prayed with them. It was really neat to be a part of their ministry for an evening. I appreciate someone like Dan going into the medical field to be a light to hurting people! I have never really thought about the impact a doctor can have in someone's life until we went to the hospital with his group. There is something about ministering to people who are hurting physically, which makes them open and vulnerable. As a doctor, to be a pillar of strength and pray with your patients truly ministers to them in a time of great tribulation in their lives. What a great impact a doctor can have for the glory of God!

We look forward to spending some more time with our friend this week!

What's for Dinner?

Crystal, this is for you...

Yes, that's right we had corn on the cob for dinner! One night this week I really didn't feel like cooking dinner. I had just gone to the grocery store and bought corn on the cob ( I had to buy a pack of 5). Produce here in the Philippines does not last that long, so I thought I might as well make all 5 of them in one meal.

For those of you who don't know, when Doug and Crystal first got married she told us that her family had meals where they ate corn on the cob. Of course, we all asked, "Is that all?" When I met Rob, being the Nebraska boy that he is, he said that his family use to have nights when all they ate was corn on the cob. Well, if you can't beat them, join 'em!!!

Funny Picture

This picture was taken on the boy's retreat during the dye war. My crazy husband...

Boys and Girls Retreat

Girls and Boys Retreat

Thank you so much for all your prayers for our retreats this weekend. They both went really well. It's so funny to think about the activities of each and how different they are. At the girls retreat, we spent most of our time talking, crying, and doing a spa night. The boys went caving, and had dye wars (like paintballing but with waterguns filled with water with food coloring). Oh how different boys and girls are!

The girls retreat went really well. I have been praying about it a lot over the past two weeks. I knew that there were a lot of girls just suffering this year. So, on Friday night I shared my testimony with them and we watched the Rob Bell video "Rain." Then I gave the girls an opportunity to share "storms" in their lives. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being so good! Almost all of the girls shared something going on in their lives or something they struggled with. Needless to say, the kleenex came out and we all had a good cry. I think a lot of the girls just needed a night to be real and get it all out. After our 3 hour sharing time (we're girls... we like to talk!) we had a spa set up for them in one of the classrooms. We had the girls retreat here at school and one of our goals was to make it feel like a different place. So, we met in the library and transformed it into a living room with couches and lamps, we even covered up all the books! At the spa, we had candles everywhere and one of the other teachers and I gave massages and we had face masks and let them soak their feet. We also had a nail stations where they could do each other's nails. I think they really liked it! Our sharing time had gone so long, we ended up going to bed at 1 am. Saturady morning, we watched cartoons and had a morning devotional from one of the other teachers, then we had a question and answer time. The girls had written down questions for us the night before and put them in a basket. They got really into it! It was great! We answered questions for 2 hours and did not have time to go through the half of them. What was so neat is that we had 5 teachers there, all in a different season of life. We had a single woman, me: the young married without kids, another married woman with young kids, another married woman with older kids, and a woman with grandkids! How cool is that?! So, we had a great time answering questions! The retreat concluded with watching Enchanted. It was such a great retreat. I am so glad we did it. I LOVE when people get to the place where they can really be real with each other!

Boys retreat... umm I wasn't there, but it sounds like it went well. They had 3 sessions talking about sexual purity. One that the 3 seniors did, one where they watched the "Every Young Man's Battle" video, and one where Rob shared and had question time. They loved going caving and doing the dye war. My husband came home on Saturday night looking like this picture. It was quite the sight! Luckily, it all came off when he took a shower! I was a little worried that his face would be pink for a few days! Fortunately one of the male teachers that went took some pictures. So, here are some pics of both retreats (in the slideshow above)!

This Week

We had a relaxing weekend, which was really nice. No major events to plan or attend, which is pretty rare. However, we do have a pretty busy week ahead. I am teaching the yearbook class here at MICA and it is due to the printers next Monday. So, this is our last week to work on it. There is still a lot of tweeking and editing to do. I am pretty anxious about it. I would appreciate your prayers if you think about it. I just want to make sure it turns out ok and on time. It's pretty different from every other class because all your work from the entire school year comes down to one due date! Ahh... I spend way too much time thinking and worrying about it. Hopefully it will all come together!
Also, this weekend we have a guys and girls retreat from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon, which Rob and I are helping to plan and speak at. Another thing we would apreciate your prayers for. Please just pray that as we prepare this week for our talks, the Lord would show us what He wants us to say. Please pray that both the boys and girls would be open and honest this weekend and that they would learn to love God more. We are pretty excited about this opportunity! We are thankful that the Lord gave us a relaxing weekend, because we have a busy week ahead! Thanks for your prayers!

Masquerade...

On Friday night the high school had another banquet. This one was a Black and White Masquerade! We had it at a hotel, which was really nice. All the students looked great in their black and white and masks. Immediately after the banquet, the high school had the All Nighter. Rob and I got the 2am to 6am shift! So, needless to say, Saturday and Sunday we just rested!

The students voted and elected a King, Queen, Jester (Funniest), and Artisan (most creative). They each got a ring, and had to be refered to as "Your Majesty" for the rest of the night. If someone forgot and used their real name, they had to kiss the ring!

Here are all the students! Almost everyone came! Two of the students playing a game.

From the Back of a Motorcycle

Monday was a Philippine holiday here and we did not have school. (There are so many national holidays here, it's amazing. I guess that's why our school year has to go from the beginning of August to the end of May) Rob and I have been wanting to go to this island called Samal which is just a short ferryboat's ride from Davao. Monday sounded like a good day to us. We borrowed a motorcycle and were on our way. The only stop we knew we wanted to make was at a waterfall on the island, other than that we just wanted to drive around. I thought it would be fun to take pictures as we went... So here are some of them... Don't tell my mom but I had to take off my helmet to take these pictures! Ha! (Just kidding mom, I know you read this... when in the Philippines, be like the Philippinos!)

The kid on the back of this bike had to ride backwards because he had to hold onto the bags!

This is a suri-suri store. They are EVERYWHERE here! They are just little stores that sell snacks and drinks.

This is not an uncommon sight here. We have seen up to 6 people ride on one motorcycle!

Here are some sweet girls on a tric! Philippinos are so nice. They always smile and wave at us!

The big town on the island.

This is a typical Philippine house.

Eventually we made it to the "waterfall." It was more like a river with rocks in it.

Chapel

So every Friday at MICA we have chapel. We usually have someone lead worship through singing and then have a speaker. The speaker is generally a teacher, parent, or local pastor. This morning, Rob was the speaker! Of course, I could not resist taking pictures of him when he spoke. He had the students split up into groups and play a game. Of course, the game comes with a lesson. The lesson?? Putting others before yourself. Although, he ran out of time (chapel started late due to techinical difficulties, and the game took longer than expected...) he did a great job! (This is for those of you in my family... I have really grown to LOVE taking pictures, especially of people... sometimes I feel like Uncle Jack at a family reunion!!! HAHA!)

ANTS

One of the things we have had to get use to here in the Philippines is ants. They are EVERYWHERE! It was really frustrating when we first got here, finding foods we had to throw away because the ants got into them. Eventually you get to the point where you just pick the ants out and eat the food anyway. It's amazing how quickly they find any available food. If any crumbs are left on the table at all, ants will find them in a matter of minutes. It's amazing. So, everything in our kitchen is in ziplock bags or plastic storage containers. One of the ways we have learned to keep ants out of our food is this: This is what you do: You get a plate and put water in it. Then you put a cup on top of the plate and the food on the cups! When I first saw this, it made me laugh! But it really works. The ants can't swim through the water! The things you learn as a missionary...

Lessons from our Househelper

One of the cultural things we have had to adjust to is having a househelper. Things take quite a bit longer to do here than they do in the States. Instead of just mailing in a check to pay for your electric and water bill, you actually have to go to a location where you can pay. We have a side-by-side washing machine, which means that almost everything is manual. We can't just put to clothes in the washer and they come out clean and spun. It's a lot more time consuming. And we don't have a dryer, so we line dry our clothes and then a lot of them need to be ironed. Many American foods need to be made from scratch. You can't buy them ready-made at the grocery store like you can in the States (for example, floured tortillas). Things are a bit slower here as well. If we go to the grocery store, we have to leave the house, walk a few blocks to where we can hail a taxi (sometimes it takes awhile to get a taxi). The taxi takes us to the mall, where our first stop is the ATM (Everywhere you go, you have to pay in cash. There are hardly any places that take credit cards and debt cards). Then we have to go to 3 different stores: the main grocery store, the meat store, and the bread store. Then we have to hail a taxi to get home. I could go on and on, but you get the idea, things take longer here.
So, needless to say, as both Rob and I are teaching, it is the culture here to have househelpers, not only because it takes a lot of time to just do daily activities, but also because it gives someone a job (this is the BIGGEST reason, in my mind, we have a helper). We have recently hired a new helper in the past month, whom money is very hard to come by. I pay her weekly so that she can buy food for her family that week. On Monday, I had her pay our water bill and there was some change P100 (about $2.50 USD). I was not at home when she was there, so she left me this note:
"Maam Johnson I take advance of P100 because I don't have money for our supper today. I'm sorry that I did this because my husband left us and had work to Cagayan 2 weeks ago and I am the one to feed my kids. Please forgive me to do this. I hope you won't get mad. Just deduct it on my wage on Friday. Thank you."
She works for us on Monday and Friday afternoons and Wednesday all day. This was on Monday that she left this note. So when she came on Wednesday, I left her a note that said it was ok and that I understood. I gave her some canned goods and a kilo of rice. She left me this message, "Maam I don't know how to express my gratitude of saying THANK YOU SO MUCH. You don't know how happy we are and my kids of what you have given to us." She was so grateful for a kilo of rice, $2.50, and a few canned goods. WOW! How much more should we be thankful for all those things that we are blessed with everyday. There are people who don't know where their next meal will come from, and we have our fridges and pantries full. Be grateful today of all the blessing the Lord has given you, even down to the fact that you could eat breakfast this morning.

Earthquake!!!

So, the other day Rob and I were reading in bed before we were going to go to sleep and the bed started swaying back and forth. Rob said "Christina, stop shaking the bed." But I wasn't moving. I thought he was shaking the bed. Weird. And then we looked around and the door to the bathroom was moving back and forth and things were rattling a little. We experienced our first earthquake. It wasn't that big, and lasted only about 30 seconds, but it was an earthquake. It wasn't how I imagined it would be. I thought it would feel like everything was shaking, but it was more like everything was rocking back and forth. Interesting!

High School OE

We had a great time! I am not really sure where to begin! We were in Nasuli for 10 days! On December 27, 2007, there was a great flood in this town that swept away many houses. There were a few people that died and many who spent the night in trees, while the water subsided. This is the reason the administration picked Nasuli as our location for OE. There were still quite a few very poor families that have not been able to build their houses again, so we can with our truck full of eager students to help build them a home.

Throughout our time there, we built 7 houses (6 cement houses and 1 wooden house), built 4 CRs (bathrooms), built a shade/classroom (that will be used to give literacy classes and to build relationship so that they might present the gospel), painted 14 classrooms at the local High School, and did 8 kid's clubs, where we presented the gospel!! Our schedule was usually get up at 6:30 am, go to the worksites from 8am to 4:30 pm, go back to where we were staying, wash-up, eat dinner, then have a group meeting at 7pm to talk about the day, sing songs, and listen to a speaker. Needless to say, our days were packed. On the weekend, we were able to go to the Kaamulaan festival, which happens every year. During this festival, there is a parade from people groups all over the Philippines. They wear the traditional dress and do traditional dance. It was so amazing to see. It was one of those "I can't believe I get to experience this" things! On Sunday, we split up and went to different churches, some smaller churches that had services in Cebuano, and one larger church that has services in English. Rob and I took a group of students to a smaller Cebuano church. As is the culture here, when we arrived, we were asked to lead songs for the children's Sunday School class! My favorite thing we did was on Friday bnefore we left. We went to each of the houses we had built and dedcated those houses to the families by praying for them, giving them Bibles in Cebuano, housewarming gifts, and writing Scripture on their walls! At each one that I went to, the women were crying! It was so sweet to see how thankful they were for the small houses we built them. Not only that, but I think this helps in the healing process that they are going through after the storm (Those from New Ortleans know exactly what I am talking about!) The family that we built a house for, the wife is 18 and the husband is 19. She was 9 months pregnant when the flood happened and spent all night hanging to a peice of bamboo. Praise the Lord that she was saved and had a healthy little girl (there is a picture of her in the slideshow).

It was a great week, although, as you can imagine, we came back very tired! We are so thankful that we had this opportunity. Please pray for the families we helped. Some are Christians and some are not. There are missionaries working with all the different people groups we ministered to during this trip. I think pictures speak louder than words, so here goes...

We're Back...

Well, we survived!! We are back from the High School OE. We had a great time! It was fun getting to know the students better and building homes for those that really need it. We are at home right now, where the internet is really slow, so I am not going to bother trying to post pictures and all the things we did over our trip. I will try to make it to school soon to post! Hope you are all doing well. Just wanted to let you all know that we are back!

High School OE

If you read my blog regularly, you know that Rob and I recently went on the Middle School OE (Outdoor Education). Have no fear, the high school goes on OE too!!! From what I hear, the high school OE is a lot different from the middle school OE. The High school OE is more like a mission's trip, where we go into a village and help build things, do kid's club stuff, etc. This one is also 10 days long, twice as long as the middle school one. This year, we are going to Nasuli, where there was a big flood in December. Many of the houses in the surrounding village were completely destroyed in the flood. So, we are going to help rebuild some houses, build CRs (bathroom... they are just like an outhouse), dig a well, paint a school, etc. I am really excited about it! I LOVE trips like this. Each teacher is incharge of a group of students. Unfortunately Rob and I are not together this time. We each have our own group, so I am not sure how much I will actually get to see him! This is a picture of my group... We are minus one, Diego, because he recently got really sick. Well, we leave tomorrow (March 5th) and will be back on March 14th. We would appreciate your prayers over this trip. Just pray for the people we will be ministering to, that they would see the love of Christ through us. Please also pray for the students, that this trip would impact their lives in a way where they learn to LOVE God above all else. Also, there are a few students who are not Christians, please pray for their slavation. We will have no internet access... so there will be no bloging while we are gone. But don't worry, as soon as we get back, I will have plenty of pictures to share with you!

Water Fun!

Last Friday after school, the middle school had a water day. Rob could not resist joining. Of course, all the kids loved throwing water ballons at Mr. Johnson....