Thank You for Reading

The weeks are starting to go by really fast. It seems like I was just writing my last blog and now I'm here doing another one. Time is definitely going by fast and I guess that's what happens when you're having fun. This week has been a little tough. I picked up another cold and it has really drained me the last couple days. It's frustrating because I've been sick so much while I've been here and it's just so much harder to do things when you don't feel well. I've had a lot of things to do and I just haven't been able to do it all. I really hope that this is just a weird thing and that I won't be getting sick every other week the whole time that I am here. I try to keep a smile on my face and stay energetic and positive but it is just so much harder to do, especially in 2nd grade where I really need to be so energetic to keep that class going and I just don't have the energy or the voice to be able to do it. I would love for my students to be able to see me for an extended period of time where I am healthy. So please pray for my health and that my body can either adjust or figure out how to stay healthy here so that I am able to be at my best for all of the things I am doing.
Other than that things are going pretty well. I found a cockroach hanging out on my bed when I got home from dinner, so that wasn't the funnest part of the day, but things have been good. I'm definitely starting to miss a lot of things though. There's a lot of minor conveniences or nice things we have at home that just aren't here and it can be hard some times. The biggest thing I think (besides family and friends) is the food. There is a lot of really good food here and so that's not the problem, but there's not a huge variety of things and there are just a lot of things that just aren't here. One of the things that I have been starting to miss is the American habit of overeating. We eat so much more food than we need in America and that's just part of our culture. We always have more food than what we need. When we have a dinner we have a lot of different things and just kind of eat until we can't eat anymore. When you go out to eat your dinner sizes are usually bigger than what you need, you eat until you are full. Here the sizes of things are how much you need, not how much makes you full. One of the reasons I have heard for people eating rice for every meal is that rice gives you a full feeling, the Filipino teachers don't know how we don't eat rice with all of our meals because they don't know how we can eat without having that full feeling. Well it's easy to do for about two months, but then it gets hard not to have that indulgence of eating more than I need. And I could if I wanted, but it just feels awkward spending a lot of money on food so I can feel stuffed and have more food than I could eat when I am surrounded by people who try to bring in enough everyday to provide  enough food for the whole family.  A couple weeks ago some of the teachers were treated to a dinner by the owner of a restaurant who is the mother of a couple of the girls in the school. They gave of us tons of food; chicken, fish, crabs, pasta, vegetables, rice, and soda and I was talking to one of the other missionaries after and we were saying it was such a weird feeling to be full. It was weird but it was the first time in the 2 months since I left America that I was really full. One of the hard things I keep thinking about is Thanksgiving. It is by far my favorite meal of the year and it's hard realizing that I'm not going to have any of the foods that I would be having if I was at home. I already know that's going to be a tough day.
On that note, one of the reasons it's hard to complain, and easier not to give in is the feeding sites. Because I'm doing the youth group now for the high school and jr high missionary kids I'm doing two feeding sites during the week. I have been going to the helicopter pad feeding on Wednesdays and the Cagban feeding on Thursdays. They are two of the poorest sites on the island. We have a few sites on the island though that aren't getting all of the funding they need to be able to feed every week so I am in the process of trying to switch to another site on Wednesday that needs both the volunteering to work the site as well as the financial support to be able to feed everyone. I'm looking to be able to support that site financially so that it will be able to feed the children every week. I think it is impotant to be there to do the work and to show them the love they need, but I also think it's important to help financially support the site to provide them with food. I have the ability to do it and instead of spending the money buying extra food for me I'm spending it so that they have enough. These are some pictures of the Cagban site, I haven't posted pictures of this site because we only have three of us working this site so I'm always doing something and just don't have much time to take pictures, but here are a few.

My flash didn't go off, which is too bad because the kid on left was wearing a Sacramento Kings Mike Bibby shirt, I thought that was awesome.

Being the doctor for the feedings definitely has it's up and downs. It is nice to be able to help these kids be able to treat their injuries and it is nice to be able to give them the ability for these injuries to get clean and heal instead of getting infected and getting worse. It can also be hard though seeing how bad some of these little things can get because they don't ave the ability to treat them on their own or keep them clean. So many things get infected and end up so much worse than they should because they don't have the ability to get things we take for granted like band-aids or clean water to keep it clean. A couple weeks ago I hit a low point when I was about to treat a little girl with a cut on her knee. I was putting some hydrogen peroxide on some cotton to be able to clean it and she started crying. I was trying to tell her that it was going to be ok but I knew she wasn't going to like the stinging of the peroxide. We managed to get through that and she kept crying the whole time. I got the band-aid out and put some neosporin on it and she started crying even more. She did not want to have anything to do with me or the band-aid. I managed to get the band aid on and she took off. She probably won't talk to me for a while. It really made me ad though, I know I didn't hurt her or anything else but it just was hard seeing her cry so much and despise me so much. I was like I don't want to do this, I didn't come here to make little girls cry. I really wish I would have had a lollipop to give her but I don't know if that would have really helped anyways.
I had my high point this last week though at the Cagban site. There is a boy there with really really bad burns on his legs. They were really bad burns and then instead of getting treated they were left alone and got really infected. I was amazed when I saw him for the first time 3 weeks ago because I had never seen something so bad, I honestly don't even know how to describe it. And I really didn't know what I was going to do with the little amount of stuff I had, it seemed like it really needed to get treatment form a real doctor. I realized I was all he had though and spent about 20 minutes trying to clean it all the best I could and get it patched up with band aids as much as possible. The next week I went back and tried to do the same thing. I had told him after the first time to keep it clean and keep treating it and keeping it covered. What I realized the second week was that he didn't have that option. I don't know much about his story but I hope to find out more about him as I spend more time at the site. What I do know is that he is one of the only older boys that goes to any of the sites. Most of the boys stop going as they start to get into jr high age for whatever reason, they think they are too cool or something. But he goes, and I think that shows how much he knows he needs the treatment, and also I think the food. I know that he is missing several teeth and that they are his adult teeth that he's not going to be able to get back. I know that he is usually dirtier and his close are dirtier than most of the other kids around. I also know that I have never seen his parents, and he gets taken care of a lot by the other mothers at the site which isn't necessarily normal, and makes me think he might be being raised by the community. I cleaned everything up again the second week and patched him up and tried to tell him again to make sure it stays as clean as possible, but I knew that it wasn't going to really be possible for him. I knew that he was going to need more than just a cleaning once a week so for this last week I got some extra gauze and an ace bandage and some extra bandaids and hydrogen peroxide and cotton. I cleaned it up and I was happy to see that some of the smaller wounds were starting to heal and overall I could tell it was starting to get a little better. I covered all of the bigger wounds with gauze and wrapped it in bandage. I handed him the extra packages of gauze and the large bandaids for the smaller wounds and the hydrogen peroxide and cotton and I really wish I would have had a camera because seeing his face was honestly one of the most gratifying moments of my entire life. I don't know if I had ever seen someone as so truly happy as he was that he had some bandaids and gauze. It was like a kid on Christmas morning opening the biggest and best toy he could ever imagine and the overwhelming joy and pride that he has that it is his. And it was for bandaids and gauze. It's one of those things that just instantly changes your perspective on life, and there is nothing I can do to even come close to explaining to you what it was like. I always treat him last because it takes so much time and because it is so messy. After I finished with him I started cleaning everything up and getting everything packed up and ready to go. We got everything ready to go and started to leave and he came up to me and with a huge smile still on his face shook my hand and said thank you. It was just so amazing to see. He waited there that whole time to be able to thank me for everything. He didn't have a parent that told him to go thank me or anything like that but he did it all on his own because was honestly that grateful. I can honestly say that 2 years of being here is worth it just for that. I was truly humbled and definitely had my perspective shaken by this boy.

The following pictures are from our staff team time that we had with all of the Agape staff on Friday. We had lunch together at the school and then went to the beach in front of the jungle barn to have some games and hang out together. It was an awesome time to have everyone together and be able to get to know everyone better.

Our principal during one of the games carrying a calimansi seed on a spoon. My team won this game, not to brag but I was pretty fast at this haha.

Another relay game of jumping into the ocean running back trying to squeeze out as much water as possible into a water bottle. My team lost at this one, if my hat didn't have holes in it we definitely would have won.

Our last competition was building sandcastles, the judge claimed that we lost this one but I think it was pretty obvious that she was bribed somehow by the other team because ours was clearly better. Afterwards we played some pretty fierce volleyball which was a ton of fun and just got to hang out with each other, which was just really awesome to be able to get to know everyone on the staff better.

A little bit of a sneak peek of next week to spark your interest, we'll have lots of pictures of my 5th graders as they took my camera after our tests and went around taking pictures of each other. It will also feature our special calendar issue which I know you'll be excited to see. Way better than firemen or puppies, or whatever normal calendars are of.

Thank you everyone for everything you have done for me. Whether it is supporting me while I am here, praying for me and the people here, sending school materials, or showing me that you love and care for me and what I am doing here. I appreciate it all so much and you are making such a huge impact on my life and on so many kids lives here.