When it Rains it Pours

When it rains it pours, and unfortunately I'm not just talking about the weather here. This has been a very tough week for me. About a week and a half ago I got the news of two of my best friends' dad being in the hospital because of a brain tumor rupturing. It has been a hard week and a half of tying to find out updates with how he is doing, and even harder knowing my friends are going through an extremely hard time and I'm on the other side of the world. A few days ago I heard the news of my 14 year old cousin being diagnosed with cancer. And once again I was on the other side of the world. It is so hard seeing family and friends going through hard times and not being there to help.
I have also had a cold for the last 9 days which hasn't made anything easier. It has been sticking around and doesn't seem to be getting any better really. I've had a few days off so I have my voice back now, so that's nice at least. I've been here for five and a half weeks and I've been sick for two and half of them and counting. It has been so hard to try to get a routine and start doing things when I've been sick so much. I feel bad for my students because they barely know what I'm like when I feel well. They've seen me so much being sick, and it's just not easy to teach when you're sick, especially when you add in the heat, humidity and no ac in the classrooms. My voice started fading on Thursday from teaching and on Friday it was gone. By Friday afternoon it was nearly impossible to teach because I had to put so much strain in trying to get out a sound at all so that they could hear me. Luckily my 5th grade class is so awesome that they really made it easy on me.
I have been blessed with some days off while I've had this cold which has been great.  Last week we had another typhoon so class was cancelled on Tuesday and Wednesday. Today and yesterday were holidays in the Philippines so there was no school. It also has given me the chance to get everything packed up and move out of the jungle barn and into my new apartment. I just moved in earlier today and I'm really happy with it so far. It is about a 2 minute walk from the jungle barn and is in between the barn and the school, so it's actually a little bit closer to the school. One downside is that I'm not living right on the beach anymore, I have a good 20-30 second walk to get down to the beach, so that's a little bit of a bummer. In all seriousness the only downside I've noticed so far is the wifi connection isn't very good here. Which is a discomfort normally, but really becomes frustrating when you're actually trying to do something like write a blog and the internet keeps going out.
Other than the move, this week hasn't been super eventful for me here. School was cancelled for two days last week because of the typhoon, and it just so happened to also be on the days of two of my feeding sites, which were also cancelled because of the typhoon. I chose not to go to the feeding site Friday because I had no voice left after teaching and did not feel well at all, definitely not well enough to be a human jungle gym for the afternoon. I also didn't want to play cold tag. I'm sure I got my cold from a little kid somewhere and I didn't want to go pass it off to some other kid. It was definitely a bummer missing out on the feeding sites last week but I was able to get back in to it today at the feeding behind the barn, and will get to go tomorrow as well.
One of the most exciting things I was able to do this week was help with a volleyball clinic this weekend. There is a Filipino here who does sports ministry who is married to one of the Filipino teachers at the school and he does a lot of clinics with the kids here when he's not off other places working. We had a missionary just come who played volleyball for Baylor and so they decided to try to set up volleyball clinics every week. Being a PE major as well as having some experience with volleyball I let her know I could help if she wanted. We had eleven kids show up which was pretty good I think for the first time. We were able to do several drills and play some games also. It amazes me how athletic kids are here. They have a lot of skills with sports and ball control and can just handle a lot of skills that the average american kid at their age and even older can't handle. I'm really looking forward to keeping the clinics going and having a lot of fun with that.
Picture time. Most of the week was rained out so I don't have a ton of pictures, but here are a few. I figured I would share some of my student's work. We went through simple anatomy in science for my 2nd grade class. They had learned about some of the major organs of the bodies and there project was to draw the front side of body and draw the brain, heart, lungs, and veins, and to draw the back side of the body and draw the brain, spinal cord, kidneys, and veins. I wanted them to have fun with it and be creative, and they definitely were very creative. I have a few students who consistently overachieve and this is one of them.

Awesome drawings, that actually look like the body parts, and even labeled the parts which wasn't required. Front side and back side, both very solid.

Then there are some other students, who don't necessarily lack the creativity, just a little bit of the anatomical correctness. The front side looks decently like a human. Has a brain, a heart, and a lot of veins.

The back side, looks a little less human like.

Seashell hunting is definitely not very hard to do here. This is a picture from right in front of the barn. The beach is all in sections that go from sand to shells to sand, just a matter of how much the ocean is spitting up when the tide is in certain places I guess. There is a lot of coral all over the place in big and small pieces, and a lot of shells of various sizes and shapes as well.

These are some shells I collected with one of the missionary kids while we were waiting for the boat to take us back to Boracay.

I found this out on the beach on my way to dinner. I couldn't believe no one had seen it yet because it was so huge.

I found something from California, too bad it was just raisins and not milk. You don't realize how nice it is to live in a dairy town until you go somewhere with no cows. Along with no cows, there is no milk.

A sunset on my way to dinner. Under these trees happens to be where some of the homeless beggars live, and it kind of shows the contrast of how beautiful it looks when you don't look at the whole picture.

I've spent a lot of time stuck inside this week because of the typhoon and the cold. I've had a lot of time to think and a lot of things to think about. It was so hard to be so far away from all the people I wanted to be with, and so hard to be able to do nothing but pray. But I learned a lot about the power and importnace of prayer this week. I saw prayer in action as so many things were happening with the best possible outcomes in what could have been otherwise terrible outcomes. I learned that even though I wasn't physically with people I still had the ability to help them through prayer, and prayer has no boundaries. I became so truly grateful with how amazing prayer is and so thankful that we have a God who gives us the ability to talk to Him. A God who hears our prayers, and listens, hears our cries and answers our prayers. The lessons that are learned in times of tragedy can some times be the most important lessons.