Thanksgiving

This week we celebrated Thanksgiving, Filipino style, sort of. We tried to make as American as possible. On Thanksgiving some of us decided that there was nowhere better to go than Mcdonalds to celebrate the holiday. There was one restaurant serving a "thanksgiving meal" but it was over $20, so we decided to pass on that and stick with $5 Mcdonalds. We had quite a feast, well I had a feast and the other missionaries just had dinner, but I had an awesome Thanksgiving feast. It was fun and I felt good being full on Thanksgiving. It also felt good because Liz and I have our feeding Thursday afternoon and then head straight to our group bible study, so it's about 8:30 before we get dinner on Thursdays so it was well worth the wait.

On Saturday we went to Carla Village to watch the Ati school put on their first ever performance for United Nations Day. We went and watched them perform and represent some different countries from the word. It was really neat because the entire community was there to watch the performance and the kids I think really felt special to have everyone there watching and caring about what they were doing.

The performance starts with prayer, then the Filipino National Anthem, it is always kind of awkward for us because we don't know the words so we just stand there while everyone else is singing.

 The preschoolers presented their song about the seven continents as well as their pictures of the continents. They did a great job singing their song.

 The kindergarteners presented their Nigerian dance. It was a long dance and I was amazed with how well they memorized the whole thing.

 The grade 1 and 2 students did their South American dance and it was a pretty awesome dance and a lot of fun to watch. If you're thinking that these kids look big for the grades they are in that's because they are. The school here just started and the kids are placed in their grade level based on what educational level they are at not what age they are. The Ati didn't have much access to school before First Love built this school for them in their village. The kids were allowed to go to the public schools but they are far away and they would constantly be teased for being Ati and if they struggled in school. The public schools here are packed with kids in the classrooms and there is not much aid for struggling students; you either get it or you don't. Some of the Ati have spent some time in the public schools so they have a little bit of educational background but for a lot of them this was their first year. The school here gives them exactly what they need in a free education right in their village where they have loving teachers and are not teased because of their race or because of their educational level. They are excepted where they are and they are taught in classrooms where they are able to learn. This school is really going to do incredible things for the Ati kids and is going to give them so many more opportunities for their futures with the ability to get an education, especially in English.

 Snack time after the performances.

The grade 1 and 2 students, some of them.

I really miss coming over to Carla village for the feedings. I am doing the youth group for the missionary teenagers now at the same time as the feedings and I love doing that, but I definitely miss these kids and hanging out with them. They still enjoy climbing on me and are still in awe of how my beard feels and in this picture the hair on the back of my neck haha.

 On our way to Carla village, the airstrip is right next to the road so when a plane is taking off or coming into the airport the road will be closed and the traffic will stop to wait for the plane to pass. We are on our trike jammed in together I think there were 6 of us, plus the driver on the trike. I usually get the back of the bike seat which is definitely the worst and scariest seat because 1 I'm male and 2 it's Filipino size so if you're too tall you wont fit, I barely make it.

 The traffic backed up after they let us through.

The walk either to the village or the walk back. I'm not sure when this was taken I was too busy watching my step. It is so beautiful on Panay. I love the countryside and the jungle over there. It's funny because we live on a paradise island but every time we go to Panay we are amazed with how beautiful it is and how nice it is over there.

 The grade 1 and 2 classroom.

After the performance we went over to the Russell's house where they had a Thanksgiving feast prepared for us. The Russell's are a missionary family here with First Love. They were on Boracay for I think 7 or 8 months and then made the move last month over to the other island near Carla Village. They are working with the Ati and in the school. We miss them over on Boracay but it is awesome to see how much they are doing with the school and with the Ati community. They are making such a huge difference.

 The turkeys cooking over a fire.

The turkeys hanging in the house.

And the turkeys getting ready to be eaten. I wish I had a picture that showed the feet and claws better. You'd think the turkey would look less appetizing when it still has it's claws attached but we were so ready for turkey that we could care less.

 Apple, something else, and kalabasa pies. The kalabasa pie was amazing, it is the closest thing we have to pumpkin here and when all the spices and everything else was mixed in it tasted almost exactly like pumpkin pie, it was incredible.

 We even had some Thanksgiving decorations that one of the missionary's friends had sent her.

 We had an awesome meal and it was so amazing to be able to eat turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and almost pumpkin pie, but we also had a lot of fun hanging out and enjoying each others' company. There was about 40 of us there and we had a great day just hanging out.

All we needed to make it better was a recliner and some football. We had plastic chairs and the kids playing keep away with the frisbee, which was pretty close. There were just as many tackles as a football game. If I look really skinny in this picture it's because I've lost over 10 pounds since I've been here. People have been noticing that I've lost a lot of weight. I probably put 5 of it back on after Thanksgiving though haha. I've been trying to put some weight on but I haven't really been able to. So I guess we'll see what happens.

 To make the day even better the donut man came by to bring us fresh donuts. This was probably one of the most amazing things in my life. Apparently the guy rides around the island on his bicycle hauling fresh donuts and dips them in sugar and he sells them for 5 pesos, which is like 12 cents. The guy hit the jackpot coming by our group. He probably sold twice as many to us as he sold the rest of the day. I bought 4 and I severely regretted not buying like 10. They were delicious and the closest thing to the donut shack I'm going to have for a long time.

 You can see how excited I was.

 On an entirely different note the kids found this spider. Definitely one of the creepiest I've seen, and no that's not my hand.

 Yosef pretending to eat the spider, he was pretty brave to get his face that close to that thing.

Me and Praise showing off our cool glasses, I have my Filipino pose down.
One of the awesome parts of the day was being able to share Thanksgiving with some of the Filipinos from our staff. They obviously don't celebrate the pilgrims and Indians feasting together here in the Philippines so a lot of the tradition was new to them. As well as the food. There are turkeys here but I don't know if anyone actually eats them because I've never actually seen turkey meat or heard of anyone or anywhere having it. Potatoes are eaten about the same as turkeys, there are a few things that potatoes are used in but in my family we ate some sort of potatoes in almost every dinner so coming here with no potatoes has been tough. There are also no pumpkins here and no pumpkin pie. I think the kalabasa being made into a pie was a new thing as well. We had one of the Filipino teachers and her daughter who is in kindergarten with us and she was asking a lot of questions about Thanksgiving that were really funny to us but totally understandable because it's just not seen here. We had some little decorations and there were two little people decorations one was a pilgrim and the other was an Indian and she asked what they were, because she's probably never heard the story before. She also when she heard we were having turkey asked her mom what turkey was. That was funny to me and I hope she ended up liking it. Her mom also was funny, she had some mashed potatoes and she saw my plate and said "oh you have the gravy on your potatoes?" I told her yeah its mashed potatoes and gravy. So she said "oh, I will have to try that". She tried it and said "wow, that's really good". It made me laugh because it is so common for us but I guess you would never know if you've never seen it. It was really fun to be able to share some of our traditions and food with them since they are normally sharing their traditions and food with us all the time.

 The Russell's have some pigs now and I was like oh that's cool, then I realized oh that's probably our Christmas dinner, that was slightly less cool.

We had our first ever Bible challenge quiz bee at the school today. Last week each class had a bible quiz to determine the top 5 from each class that would participate in the quiz bee finals. The finals were today. The kindergarteners went first, then grades 1-3, and then grades 4-6.

 This is grades 1-3. They were on teams equally divided with all three grades. One student from each class was in each of the 5 teams. Which was good for equality sake, but it also made it hard because I had one student on each team so I wasn't able to root for any team in particular. I think my class would have taken it if they were together though so I guess it's only fair to split them up, yes that might be a little bias, it also might be a little true.

 Adding up the scores of the kindergarteners quiz.

 The first place team of kindergarteners.

 The third place team of grade 1-3, I was trying to take pictures but also had to keep my kids under control and stuff so I didn't get a lot of pictures.

 These are the five participants from my grade 2 class. Arah, Mikaella, Hazel, Heshen, and Kristian.

The grade 4-6 quiz bee.

Some of the school staff after the quiz bee. You know you're in the Philippines when there are ten adults in a picture and I'm the 2nd tallest haha.

 The Christmas tree in our grade 5 class. All of the rooms are decked out with Christmas decorations and you're probably thinking oh that's normal since it's after Thanksgiving, these have been up since October. We've had 2 full months of Christmas season and we're still a month away from Christmas. And those are empty boxes wrapped in Christmas paper, not real presents unfortunately.

 My photogenic 5th graders posing in front of the tree. The rest are hiding from the picture.

My photogenic 2nd graders who follow the camera around the room as I'm taking pictures. They get in almost every picture.

 Karryl Angel, Jules and his tonsils, Kristian, and Rjon.

 Joe Cedrick and Rjon.

 Ralph Jay, Arah, and half of Heshen.

 My siamese twins conjoined at the head.

Joe Cedrick, Hazel, and me. This is what people would look like without ears, in case you ever wondered.
A funny little story from today in my 2nd grade class. During the club time we were hanging out and everyone was just doing their own thing. Apparently Kristian had some tape and he put it on Jules arm and pulled some of his hair off. Jules comes up to me with a whiny face and says Mr. Schmidt, Kristian stole my hair. I started laughing I was expecting him to complain about the fact that it hurt or something, he was just upset that that hair belonged to him and Kristain stole it haha. I really do need to start writing things down because so many funny things happen in class but I can never remember them. My kids are pretty hilarious.

Another event this week was our small prayer group that meets every week. It's low key and we usually just pick a night when we feel like we want to do it and we do it. It has been really awesome though because it is hard to have people to talk about things with and there is so much stuff going on and it can be hard when you don't have any one to share it with. But we have come together and shared our weeks and our praises and our struggles and it has really been an amazing way to get to know each other more and be able to support each other more. We are able to encourage others that are going through things we are also going through or things we have gone through before. we are able to share our thoughts and get prayer for things in a totally loving and non-judgmental group and it is something I am definitely thankful for. It has made things so much better her for me having that group. These last couple of weeks I have really struggled with my 2nd grade class. I really feel like they aren't learning from me and it's so hard to come in and want to make a difference and then feel like you aren't doing anything. My 5th graders have been doing amazing and it makes it so hard to see my 2nd graders struggle so much. I have really had a hard time with wanted to continue to teach them. It has been so hard to wake up everyday and be motivated to teach them because it feels like I'm doing such a bad job. Talking in my small group last night and talking with my partner teacher in grade 2 tonight, they were really able to encourage me. I was talking with Hya tonight and before I even said anything she told me how much the kids love having me in class and how much like a father figure I am to them. Everyday when I come in to class I get tackled at the doorway by my kids and throughout class there are students who randomly come up and hug me or grab my arms or legs or try to climb on me. She told me that a lot f them do those things because they see me as a father figure. That really cheered me up because I am so glad that I am able to be that for them. I told her about how I have been feeling with the class and she was able to encourage me and make me feel better about it. For our bible study last week we listened to a guy do a sermon on youtube and part of his message was about telling yourself you are doing better than you think you are. I thought that it was great to hear and everything but I just didn't believe it in the grade 2 situation. You can tell me I'm doing better than I think I am all you want but it's not going to encourage me if I don't believe it. I think we are naturally critical of ourselves and so I think that it is true that we are doing better than we think we are, but what I realized is that it doesn't matter if someone else tells you that, you need to be able to tell yourself that. I was so concerned about their quiz scores and their understanding of adjectives and science that I totally lost my focus of what I was doing. Why I was there. Yes, I am there to teach them English and science but that is definitely not the only thing I'm doing there. I was so focused in that I lost focus of what was really happening and now that I am able to focus back out and see the things that are going on like being a father figure to a group of kids who may or may not have their father at home with them is way bigger than if they understand the 3 states of matter right now. I was able to get a new perspective and was able to tell myself that I am doing better than I think I am and I'm able to believe it. I think throughout life if I was able to tell myself that it would have made things so much easier. With that said please pray that I would continue to feel confident in my teaching and what I'm dong here and please pray that my 2nd graders will understand what I am teaching. We have our mid-quarter quizzes tomorrow, please pray that my kids will be able to remember everything they learned and be able to put their knowledge down on the quiz.

This was another awesome week and it was really awesome taking some time to remember all of the things that I am thankful for. I wrote the following little poem thing on Thanksgiving and I'll put it here instead of listing all the things I am thankful for because I could go on forever.

I am so thankful for all the opportunities that I have been given to do awesome things,
I am so thankful for the joy that I have for what I do,
I am so thankful for all of the those days that seemed like nothing was happening, but prepared me for the tomorrow that was in store for me here,
And I am so thankful to have the privilege to serve such an awesome and powerful God.

I am so thankful for everyone who has shaped me into the person I am today,
I am so thankful for everyone who has and continues to love and support me,
I am so thankful for my Agape family here on Boracay,
And I am so thankful for the God who has given me so much more than I could ever desire.

I think being here in the Philippines has done a lot of things for me but one of the biggest things is opening up my eyes to all the things I am so thankful for. Being on the other side of the world living in a different place and culture really opens your eyes and gives you knew perspectives.  I think I am so much more grateful for what I have been given and what is gong on in my life. I am so much more grateful for my family and friends who love and support me and I am so much grateful for all things God has done for me in my life. I have truly been able to see all the things God has done in my life to prepare me for this time that I have here. There were so many times that it was hard for me back home. I was trying to give so much time to things and trying to do my best in everything but I didn't seem to be able to do enough. I never felt like I was doing what I was supposed to be doing, but everything I did helped prepare me for everything I am doing here. Everything had a purpose. There were times when it was tough being the college student who didn't drink and didn't party. There were times when it was tough being the college kid who didn't do so many things that it seemed like everyone else was doing. But I thank God that He gave me the strength to keep standing firm all of those days because all of those days that seemed like they didn't mean anything were the days that led me to now. It is so easy to look at today and everything we have going on today. It is so easy to be dragged down by the things we are dealing with today, but everything that happens today makes a difference in your tomorrow. Every choice you make has a difference in your tomorrow and it might be hard to see for a while, it might seem like your todays are all the same and you are never getting to tomorrow, but eventually your tomorrow will come and you will realize how important your yesterday was, in either a good or bad way. I am so grateful I lived my todays how I did and that I was able to because of the strength that God gave me to be able to do it. All those days that I thought meant nothing were so crucial in the tomorrow that I have discovered here in the Philippines. I hope this is meaningful to everyone reading this but especially to teenagers. You are going through a lot of tough and confusing times and I really encourage you to stay strong and stand firm in your faith. You have a lot of days and it only takes one day to change your entire tomorrow, every day counts. I don't know what your tomorrow holds but I do know that if you choose to live today based on faith and following God's path it may not be the easiest thing today, but it will be totally worth it tomorrow. 

I definitely can't make a list of things I'm thankful for without including everyone who has supported me in some way or another on this mission. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for your support and I am so grateful for it. I honestly can't describe how thankful I am that so many people believed in what I am doing here and believed in sending me to do it. It is so amazing to have that support and I want you to know that I don't take it for granted. Your financial support and your prayer is so greatly appreciated and is allowing me to do so much here in the Philippines, Thank you so much for everything you do for me, and happy belated Thanksgiving. 

Just a side note, it's 3 in the morning and so there may be some typos or sentences that completely don't make sense because I am definitely a little sleepy. If so then I apologize and hope you will ignore them, if not then completely ignore this last paragraph, it never happened.

Having Fun

I must be having fun because time is flying by. It seems like the weeks are flying by. Even the months are starting to go by fast. It seems like November just started and it's already almost December. This month has definitely been one of the best months I've had in a long time. Things just seem to be going right. Everything just seems to be working out and it seems like that never happens for me. It used to feel like I'd have days where every thing that could possibly go wrong, would go wrong, and it would drag me down so much. But everything seems to be starting to go well and even when things do go wrong (which they do) they don't have much effect on me. They don't bring me down because I just have so many things going well. I really love it here and there might be a lot of things that are hard and frustrating about being here but I have found what truly gives me joy. I have always had that feeling that this is what gives me joy. When I work with kids, when I serve people, when I went to Guatemala, I could feel it. I thought that I had it figured out, but there was the thought in the back of my head that said what if that was just short term. What if Guatemala gave me joy for a week or two but then it would go away. What if doing it every day made it have less effect. Well those thoughts were wrong. The joy hasn't gone away, it has grown. Growing relationships with these kids and these people keep that joy growing and I honestly can't even describe it in words.
It was hard coming here with only the beliefs that I could do this because the reality was I didn't really know. I had faith that I could, but I didn't really know what to expect. I had people who knew I could do it and people who doubted that I could. I didn't want to let people down and I had to trust that I was doing what God had called me to do and that He would help me do it. I had to make a decision if I wanted really commit to 2 years and the first thought that came into my head was that one year would be too short. I spent a week in Guatemala and I knew that was way too short. I spent a year teaching at Escalon High and I knew I was going to miss those kids. I had a gut feeling that I was going to fall in love with these kids and not want to leave after a year. I made a 2 year commitment and my sister joked that I knew one week was too short so I jumped straight to 2 years. It was a big jump, but the longer I've been here the more I think I made the right decision. This year is going by so fast and it seems like it's going to be over before I know it. I am falling in love with these kids and they give me so much joy. I am exactly where I am supposed to be and that is such an amazing feeling to have. With that said, Christmas is coming up, which is going to be tough, as well as the 6 month wall which apparently all missionaries hit and apparently it's hard and stuff. So we'll see how that goes I guess, but for now things are going so great.
So this week is Thanksgiving in the US, not so much in the Philippines. I'll still be teaching on Thursday while all of you are enjoying your food and football. So what better to teach about on Thursday than Thanksgiving, so that will be interesting. I also have my feeding site on Thursday so that will be really cool as well. I will definitely be missing my favorite meal of the year, but I am glad I get to have the feeding that day and my mom also just sent me some pumpkin pie pop tarts so I will definitely be having some of those.
On Saturday we will be going over to the other island to Carla Village to watch the Ati School do a performance and then afterwards we will be going to the missionaries' house, who are over there working with the Ati school, for a Thanksgiving meal. I'm not really sure exactly what we're having, but it will definitely be nice, even if it's not as good as home.
On the subject of holidays, I don't know if I've mentioned this before but in the Philippines Christmas starts in October. As soon as October comes along the trees and lights and decorations go up. The jungle barn had their tree up by the end of September. November 1st seems to be the official start to Christmas season. All the Halloween decorations go down and the Christmas ones are in full force. Christmas music has been playing everywhere he entire month, decoration are up in all the stores, restaurants, and some houses. The school and all the classrooms are decked out in Christmas decorations, we even have trees up.
I got my box with my new camera yesterday and I took some pictures of the decorations and the trees in our rooms, but unfortunately I didn't realize it was going to take 4 hours to load the software for my camera on my computer. So that's a bummer. I won't be able to get pictures onto my blog tonight, but next week I should have plenty of pictures for you.
So this week was a very good week and things went very well with the exception of one thing. On Thursday we had our feeding site get cancelled because the Pastora was in  Manila for a few days and she normally plans everything and buys the food and all that. So me and the other missionary that work this site decided that we would go and try to have the feeding just without the food. So I brought my frisbee and medical kit and she brought a Bible story and coloring sheets and we headed out. We showed up and the kids were excited to see us. We got the frisbee out and started to play and I thought it was awesome that we were so loved there that the kids would all come out and hang out with us. But the best part was when Liz got out the story and they all sat down and listened. Any white person can come in with a frisbee and the kids would want to play, but they don't even usually sit still when the adults are there trying to get them to listen to the story, and here they were willingly sitting down and listening to the story without anyone making them or doing it just to get food. It was such an awesome feeling. This awesomeness was going through my head when all of a sudden the kids took off running over to the middle of the village. We didn't know waht was going on so we followed them over there. We got there and there were 2 women from the village fighting. They were yelling and screaming at eachother and everyone in the village was just kind of standing around watching. I didn't know what they were saying, but they were definitely getting into it. So I started to try to get the kids to go back over and hang out because I really didn't think they needed to be there watching that. It wasn't working very well though because the kids wanted to watch. All of a sudden one of the ladies takes off running past us and goes into her house. So I started to get the kids back over to where we were and we were going to pass the coloring sheets out and get that going. We got most of them back over and all of a sudden the lady comes walking out of her house yelling and carrying a knife the size of her forearm. I was absolutely terrified. I honestly had no clue what was about to happen. There were no police or anything here there was nothing to stop anything from happening. Obviously she was mad enough to get a knife out who knew if she was mad enough to use it. I was so scared because it was a moment where I had no clue what was going to happen and I knew there was nothing that I could do to keep something from happening. Anything I could do could just as quickly escalate the situation. So of course all of the kids ran back over to watch and so i started grabbing the little ones and taking them as far away from it as possible. The last thing I wanted was for one of them to get hurt or for them to have to watch something happen. The lady started chasing the other lady with the knife and one of the guys from the village grabbed her arm and wrestled the knife away from her which was amazing because he easily could have gotten extremely injured from that. I didn't see the next part because I was taking some kids away, but apparently while the one guy was taking the knife from the one lady another lady gave the lady she was fighting with a knife and she started going towards the first lady. A guy jumped on her and got the knife away from her and when I got back to seeing things there were about 8-10 people fighting and trying to break the fight up. The 2 ladies were in the middle and there were some other ladies fighting in there too and then some guys trying to pull everybody away. There was hair everywhere being pulled out and the lady without the friends was getting pretty thrashed, her clothes were totally ripped and falling apart and she was still furiously going at it. This went on for awhile and I was over on the other side holding the lady's baby to keep him from having to see everything, he's probably one and a half years old. I'm not really a fan of naked babies and I really didn't want to get peed on but I really didn't want him over there watching it. We were doing our best to try to keep the kids we had over there busy and not focused on the fight but it was tough. The lady ran back to her house again and pulled out another thing that I don't even know what it was but it had a long metal point on the end of it and was probably even more dangerous than the knife. Luckily there was a guy that followed her over and took it from her and broke it. So that made her mad and she went and picked up a ten foot bamboo pole and started waving that around and continued to yell at the top of her lungs. It was getting really frustrating because this was about 20 or 25 minutes into the fight and this lady was still hysterical and I'm over here holding her baby and we had her 5 year old daughter with us crying and she had another daughter over there watching the whole thing and she was acting absolutely insane. She realized the pole was to heavy to do anything with so she went and got a big stick that basically looked like a club and took that over and started waving it around. By this point the men of the village had decided to just make a wall and use their size and strength advantage to basically just block the lady off and not let her do anything. After probably close to 40 minutes the lady finally realized she wasn't going to be able to do anything and furiously left.
I don't know what the fight was over but it must have been something really crazy because I have never seen anyone act that insane ever. Forty minutes and she still wasn't cooled off. The most frustrating part is that all the kids had to see that and especially her own kids. We stayed there for a little longer and did the coloring sheets and I got out the med kit but it was so hard leaving and thinking that who knows what was going to happen that night if the lady came back or if she was going to keep going at it. The hardest part was having to let her kids go home to that. What were they going to see tonight. What were they going to have to go through. I can't even imagine how awful the situation was for them. The lady that hosts the site has her kids go to Agape and she told us nothing else really happened, so that was good news to hear, but it'll definitely be weird going there this week.
That was definitely the worst thing that I have seen here and was probably the hardest thing I've had to deal with and see but things are going good when you can still say that your week went well. I got some snacks in my box and I am loving those. It's amazing how things like cereal and easy-mac are like gold here. I wish I didn't end on such a sad note, but my students really haven't been that funny this week so I don't have any funny quotes to share. But I do wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving and I hope you enjoy all of the delicious food. I will be thinking of you haha.

4 Months!

It is hard to believe I have been here for 4 months already. Time is going by so fast and it's a weird feeling, four months hit me a lot more than three months did. Three months seemed like I was still new and learning but four month seems like I've been here for so long. I've definitely got my routine down and know what I'm doing here. I am still learning things but I am so much more able to do whatever I need to do here.
It has also been interesting seeing how much things have changed here on the island since I've been here. It is still a fairly new tourist destination and so it is still growing and developing. There are new things going up and things changing all the time. I got to the island right at the start of typhoon season and it's ending right about now. Everything was blockaded and weatherproofed as much as possible along the beach for typhoon season and now a lot of places are taking things down and things are getting so much more open along the beach and it looks so much different. The biggest thing that has happened though is the opening of Mcdonalds on the island. It is the first American restaurant on the island and really the only place you can get a hamburger that's actually partly cow on the island. It was weird because we went to Iloilo a couple weeks ago and were so stoked about Mcdonalds there and we were saying that Boracay should get a mcdonalds so we wouldnt have to take a 5 hour trip to get it. Within a couple days of getting back there were signs up all over the island about mcdonalds coming soon. We figured that could mean anything from a month to a year. We were definitely excited but weren't expecting for it to be opening a week later. We found out on Saturday that it would be opening on Sunday at 9am. I really wanted to camp out that night in front of mcdonalds so we could be the first customers, but I couldn't get anyone to do it with me. Which is kind of a bummer because I know so many people that would have totally done it with me back at home. It worked out alright though, I wasn't the first customer but we still got to go after church. There were literally without exaggeration over 100 people there. It seemed like the whole island was there, it was so crazy. Almost all of our missionary staff was there along with a lot of the Filipino teachers from the school. We waited in line for a while but the wait was worth it, it is amazing how eating no American food for 4 months can make something like mcdonalds taste so amazing. It was absolutely incredible and we were definitely pretty happy people. Unfortunately because we live on a tourist island where everything is more expensive than it should be, so is mcdonalds. It is a lot more expensive than it was in Iloilo, and is even more expensive than it is in the US. That is a major bummer, but it might be a good thing because it's going to make us eat there less and probably keep us all a lot skinnier.

I was so excited about mcdonalds I was even willing to take a picture with the creepiest Ronald Mcdonald ever. The most awkward part of this picture is that I had my friend take it for me but he was not the only person taking my picture. There were some other Filipinos that just decided to take my pose as an opportunity to take a picture. So that was a little weird. There's probably a facebook picture somewhere with the title "crazy white guy and Ronald", so technically I might be famous now.

Mcdonalds was definitely one of the biggest highlights of the week but altogether this has been a really awesome week. Things have just been going well and everything just seems so awesome. I have had a lot of time to spend with the other missionaries here and I am making some really awesome friends. I think it is such an awesome group that we have here and it's so neat to see how we all just kind of ended up here from finding it online and felt it was where we were supposed to go. I think we can really see how much God has really called us all to be here and how we each play a part in what God is doing here. We spend a lot of time playing games and hanging out but we have also gotten to know each other a lot better and we are able to encourage each other and help each other at such a deeper level. It has been awesome getting to be so close to everyone and it is awesome because several of the missionaries are thinking about coming back next year which would be so awesome. We have church on Sundays and Bible study on Thursdays, and then obviously have a lot of things throughout the week but we really started to talk to each other about the struggles we have with church and with not really having the same amount of time with God as we had had back at home. Church is hard here because it is a Filipino church that we go to so the pastor and pastora do the sermon in both languages. It is really hard to track a lot of the time and can be tough not to get something out of the message every week. So four of us decided to start a weekly prayer session where we basically just meet every week and spend some time talking about how we are really doing. Getting into a deeper level and really being able to pray for each other and encourage each other. We have done it the last 2 weeks and it has been really awesome. It was hard for a while when I got here to be going through a lot of things and not really having anyone here to be able to go to to talk about things. I have those people here now and I get to be one of those people for someone else so that is really awesome.
Probably the biggest highlight of the week came yesterday for me at the immigration office. When you are here for three months or longer you need to get an id card or an i-card to be on the island. You also still have to pay the same amount to be able to extend your stay every 2 months. It gets really expensive and can be a little annoying. The immigration office is known for it's corruptness of taking advantage of foreigners and also their lack of understanding or caring about your situation. Two months ago when I was extending my stay I also had to apply for my i-card. It cost about $90 and required a lot of paperwork and copies of different things. They told me all of the things that I needed for it and so I went out and got everything done and brought it back a couple days later. They said ok, and it would take about 3-4 weeks to be done. So after about a month and a half I went back in to pick it up and they said it wasn't there. They looked at my stuff and said that I didn't turn in a copy of my receipt so they couldn't do it. So I politely tried to explain that they told me everything I needed and I went out and got it all and they said it was all there. They didn't really care what I had to say so I went home to get my receipts. I made the photocopies of them and brought them in the next week. They told me that it wasn't the right receipts and that the i-card wasn't on the receipt. This made me upset because I kept all of my receipts and these were the receipts that they had given me. They are all written in abbreviations so I cant really see what they are saying but I knew these were either the right receipts or they didn't give me the receipt, I knew I didn't lose it. So I went home and looked through all my stuff and there was no receipt anywhere. So my time expired on Saturday so I needed to go in and get my extension and try to figure out the i-card situation also. So Thursday was a holiday that nobody even knew about until Wednesday, which seems to happen a lot here, so I couldnt go Thursday. I went on Friday after school and youth group and they were closed. I was so mad because now I was going to have to pay the over-extended fee as well as probably buy another i-card which would be another $115 dollars beyond just paying for the $70 dollar extension. I had heard of other missionaries that were a day late and the immigration office didn't care and still charged them the fee. So Sunday night in our prayer group I brought it up to pray about and it was one of those things that as we were talking about it I really didn't think prayer was going to do much. I knew that I was going to have to go in and get ripped off by these people because that's just how things are. Well Monday God sure taught me a lesson. I went in there and told the guy that those were the only receipts that I was given and that he knew that I paid for it. He did his normal routine of you must have lost your receipt, you need your receipt sir. Well they just so happened to have a supervisor lady from somewhere in there right then and so she saw there was a problem and came over. I told her the situation and all of a sudden we went from having no solution to simply looking in my file to see if I had bought it. She comes back and says your copy of the receipt was in the file and they never gave it to you. Just go make a photocopy and bring it back and it'll be ready to go. So I did and that was solved so then I asked to extend my stay and he of course said that I was over extended and all that. So I told him I wasn't able to come Thursday because it was a holiday and you were closed Friday. Well apparently I don't think they were supposed to be closed on Friday because he immediately tried to hush me up and said everything was ok. So I was able to extend without paying the over-extended fee. I was legitimately going in there ready to pay $185 and ended up only paying the $70 that I should have payed. I immediately was in awe of the power of prayer and how no matter how much it seems like there's no possible way that things will work out, God is so much bigger than what we label as possible and impossible. I was so upset and did so much worrying over the situation because I didn't think it would ever work out. Praying was the last thing I tried, and I still didn't even think it would work. I think so often prayer is always the best solution, but always the last option. We always try to fix things ourselves and then when we are in desperation we go to plan b or c which is prayer. When if we would have just gone to prayer in the first place we would have saved so much trouble and so much anxiety. Prayer is so much more powerful than we can ever imagine and it's because we are taking the situation out of our hands and putting it in God's, and he is able to do so much more than we ever could.
On that note I do have some prayer requests for those who wouldn't mind praying. I have two students who failed English last quarter and it puts us in a really hard situation because they don't hold kids back here. It isn't an option because people just don't look at it the same way we do here. If you are held back here they take it as an absolute failure.You have no chance in life if you were held back. Which is the worst possible way to look at it. Kids are getting passed from grade to grade without learning anything and are getting further behind every year because they are just getting passed. the problem is that these kids just need more time to practice and catch up. Taking the 2nd grade over isn't a failure. What would be a failure is to not learn anything in 2nd grade, not learn anything in 3rd grade, and not learn anything in the rest of your education because you were never ready for any of it so you understood nothing. These kids have a chance to spend another year trying to grasp these concepts and then move into the third grade and be at a level where they can understand it. Instead they will be moving into third grade and will not be ready for it and fail it as well. My partner teacher talked with both of the students' parents today and it was interesting hearing what was going on. One of my student tries really hard but just doesn't get any of it. It is pretty obvious he has a learning disability but he is so far behind that it just makes it that much harder. Apparently his parents are never really home or when they are they don't have time to help him with school and even if they did they don't know enough to be able to help him. This makes things so hard for him because they don't have resources for student's with learning disabilities like we do in the US. they are thrown in with everyone else and are expected to handle everything like everyone else. Without any help from home his only chance is to get help from his teacher's but he needs so much help that there just isn't enough time to be able to get him ready for 3rd grade when he really isn't even ready for 2nd grade. I'm not going to include his name but I really hope that you would pray for him and that he would be able to get the help that he needs and we would be able to come up with the best solution for him to be able to be successful.
Our other student is very different. He just doesn't care. He is failing because he doesn't do his work, doesn't try on any of his work or tests, and doesn't do anything to try to improve. His biggest problem is that his parents don't take his school serious, so why would he. He has missed school before because he stayed up late watching tv and was too tired to go to school in the morning. He has missed school because he wanted to watch tv instead of go to school. Well, if you let him do it then of course he will. If you make tv more important than school why would he ever try in school. They are trying to claim that he has a learning disability, and I'm not a doctor so I can't say he doesn't, but he has shown that he has the ability to learn just fine, but he has to want to, and he usually doesn't. It makes me sad that they are trying to claim a learning disability is the reason he is failing when in all reality it has a lot to do with his parents attitudes towards school I think. I really pray that his family will realize how important school is and that they make such a huge impact on his education and they are very responsible for how he does.
These are not very rare cases here. There are so many of my students who don't have support from there parents whether because they aren't there, they don't care, or they don't know how to help. Many of my kids parents, especially fathers, live in other countries or other parts of the Philippines for work and it is not uncommon at all for students to live with only one parent or even with aunts or grandparents. It is also very common for students' parents to work long hours and not have a lot of time to spend helping them with schoolwork. There are also a lot of students who have parents who don't speak English, it makes it very hard for them to learn English when they don't have any English outside of class. Please pray for all of my students, and all of the students at Agape who are going through hard situations at home and don't have the support that is so important for these kids to have.

I apologize again for the lack of pictures, I should be getting my new camera soon and will be able to put pictures up again. Until then here are some pictures another missionary took. We play basketball every once in a while here at a nice court close to the school.

 We were playing at the court and a couple of Russian guys showed up and we played three on three with them. If I look really short and you think oh that's just because he's standing far away, no its because the guy in the middle is 6'7". His friend (who I guarded) was probably about 6' 3" or 4". My friend Russ is probably 6'2". Me and Christian (in the orange) are a solid 5'9", and Andrew (in the red) is probably 5'8". It was a very interesting yet fun game.

 I don't know if I was about to pass, or I just caught a pass or what, but I promise I wasn't double-dribbling haha.

We went to the court on Sunday afternoon to play and we got rained out. And this is a covered court, that's how crazy the storms are here. The court was flooded in about 5 minutes. We waited awhile for it to dry a little bit on one side and were able to play a little bit, but it was crazy how powerful the storm was.

To finish on a funny note I have a couple of stories of my students to share with you. We have a club time during the day where the foreign teachers teach a station of either art, music, pe, or some other things like that so the Filipino teachers can take their lunch. We have another PE teacher on staff so I decided to do a drawing station. It has been a lot of fun and has been really neat being able to teach them some of the things I have been taught how to draw. For this rotation I am teaching them how to draw an oak tree and it is really interesting because a lot of them haven't seen an oaktree and haven't really seen many trees like an oak tree here. My dad taught me how to draw an oak tree and it has always been something I've enjoyed drawing, and now I am getting to teach 200 kids how to draw an oak tree. The other day while I had one of the first grade classes I was getting to the last steps of drawing it and so the tree I drew on the board was about done and one of the 1st graders came up and he had a puzzled look on his face and was staring at the board. I thought he was going to ask a question about something or he didn't understand something. He then said with the same puzzled look on his face "that looks like a real tree". It was like he was puzzled how I could make it look real or something. I said well good, that was what I was going for. He gave it one last look and then turned around and went back to his seat. It was so funny and I guess I was glad that my tree looked real.
Today in my 5th grade class I was checking my students' sentences they wrote with their spelling words and I read the students who sit in the front row papers upside down because I am in front of them facing them. One of my students has made a comment before about how I read it upside down and I was thinking he was meaning that is hard to do or something. Well today I was reading his sentences upside down and I noticed he was staring at my eyes and had a really puzzled look on his face. I looked at him and he asked how I could read upside down. I kind of laughed and said that it was just something I knew how to do. Unsatisfied with the answer he told me to read it again and he gazed into my eyes again and asked me "do you turn your eyes upside down?" So of course I acted like I was turning them back to normal looked at him and said "yep". He sat there speechless for a couple of minutes haha. My students are in such awe of me and my amazing talents they believe I have.

Random Topic Week

This week has been a nice week to be able to relax and also have some fun on our week off of school. I spent a lot of my time hanging out and playing games with the other missionaries. I was also able to catch up on a little bit of sleep which was very nice. On Wednesday several of us went to Ariel's point to cliff dive. It is about a 30 minute boat ride to the other island where the cliff diving location is. It is a day long thing and the place provides an awesome lunch as well. It was an awesome day and was so much fun. The place is set up on some cliffs and they have several planks set up at different heights to jump from. They had planks at 2 meters, 3m, 5m, 7m, 8m, and 15m. The ocean was also great for snorkeling. I was excited to go because I love cliff diving and was really excited to be able to do it. What I realized after a while was it was a lot more fun to watch people challenge themselves and do things they didn't think they could do. Right away when we got there I went off of the highest planks and they were really fun and I did them some more throughout the day, but I spent most of the day watching everyone else. It was a lot of fun watching the kids slowly making their way up from plank to plank. I was with Biz (the youngest missionary kid with us) a lot of the day and he worked his way up to diving from each rung of the latter, to diving from the 3m plank. He also worked up to jumping off of the 8m (which by the way is really high, about 26 ft.) It was so fun encouraging him and cheering him on and then so awesome when he would come up out of the water and being so stoked that he had done it.

Biz thinking about jumping off the 5m plank early in the day.

We also spent the last 10 minutes of the day trying to encourage one of the principal's daughters to jump from the 15m (49 ft) plank. She was up there but had made the mistake of looking down. We were cheering her on for about 10 minutes before she finally jumped and ended the day off well.

This picture is awesome on several levels. First it was the last jump of the day and one of the highlights with her getting up the courage to jump from the 15m plank. But it is also awesome because out of my excitement I threw my hands up and perfectly got into this picture, and I think I may have a career in hand modeling.  By the way the plank is above the picture and she still has a ways to hitting the water, 49 ft is a long drop.

This is the point as we were pulling up in the boat. You can see a couple of the planks.

We also had a birthday party this week. Which was fun and very interesting at the same time. We had balloon animals for all the kids that showed up and they had games, and dancing, and all sorts of fun. Then they got out the pinata. Which wasnt actually a pinata but a clay pot full of candy. Some of the things that they do in the Philippines just make you wonder sometimes. First you've got a dizzy, blindfolded kid with a giant bamboo stick swinging it while there are forty kids as close as possible to the center. Second you've got a clay pot that's going to shatter everywhere when it gets hit. Third you've got 40 kids who would probably all jump off a bridge to be able to get a piece of candy and they're all going to be going after it regardless of the broken pot all over the place. One of the kids hit the pot and part of it broke off with the rest of the pot just dangling up above all the kids going after the candy that had fallen, I thought for sure it was going to break and fall on the kids, it was such a scary moment. So then I thought they were going to get the rest of the candy out and be done, but nope, they tied the next kid up and kept going. I really thought it was going to fall on the kids the next time it was hit but luckily when it got hit it all broke so there were only some minor issues of the pieces hitting kids. I thought it was insane, but it's just one of those things you just have to go along with, luckily no one got hurt, miraculously.

 The kids surrounding the pinata.

Yeah, crazy right?

So since we're on the topic of interesting things that people do here, here are a few more. When it rains here people will be walking down the street in a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops getting soaked, but they will have a plastic bag over their head because if you get rain water on your head you will get sick. People and kids where a towel on their back basically like the opposite of a cape because if you let sweat just sit on your back you will get sick. If you jump rope you will have an appendicitis because there was a kid one time that had his appendix burst while jump roping. Antibiotics are used here like tylenol is used in the US. You dont need a prescription for anything so they just take antibiotics for everything. If you have a cold take antibiotics, a fever take antibiotics, a hang nail take antibiotics, a stubbed toe take antibiotics. It is pretty crazy how much they get taken for everything and anytime we have anything wrong with us we get offered antibiotics.
The craziest thing I think I have found out is that on test day for my fifth graders I bought them bananas to eat as a snack between their tests and half of them wouldn't eat the bananas because they were ripe and had some brown spots on them. This is an island that lives off of rice, mangoes, and bananas and they don't eat ripe bananas? They told me the brown spots are viruses and they'll get sick if they eat them. It has been interesting teaching some health subjects and teaching about the body and hearing all of the old wive's tales they have here and how many people actually believe them and how ingrained the kids have it in themselves too.
It seemed like there was so much going no this week, but there really wasn't very many things to write about, and sorry again for my lack of a camera. I really wish I could get you more pictures of things. Here are some other random things going on in my world.
The last day of testing got rained out last week before vacation and so we had to postpone it until yesterday. I was really worried that my kids would struggle with the tests after having the week off but I graded their tests today and they did so well. I was so stoked grading the tests. The science test was really tough and they still did well on it. They also did extremely on their English test. I was so happy they did so well because it really showed me that they were learning what I was teaching them and they were even able to hold onto it a week after we reviewed it. I was really excited during the day. Then tonight my partner teacher for 2nd grade informed me that 2 of our kids had failed English this quarter. It wasn't really surprising, but it was really depressing. It created quite a dilemma because if they fail a quarter here they have to redo the 2nd grade. The biggest problem is that teachers in the Philippines don't fail kids. It just doesn't happen. These kids just don't know any English and they are so far behind where they should be. Passing them is just going to set them up for failure in the third grade because they aren't even at the 2nd grade level there is no way they will be able to handle the 3rd grade level. I think the best thing for them to do is to be able to take grade 2 over so that they can catch up to where they need to be or at least hopefully get close enough that maybe they can handle grade 3. Unfortunately holding kids back here just doesn't send that same message here. It creates a very hard situation that just doesn't seem to have a right answer. I'm going to be talking with the principal about it to try to figure it out but it is just a really tough situation.
Please pray for my kids as well as for the situation that we will be able to find the best situations for them to be able to succeed.
So I don't know if you know but apparently there is an election going on today in the US. If I wasn't searching for news about it I honestly probably wouldn't even know about it. It is pretty surprising how hard it is to find out what's going on with it. I mean I understand this is a different country and I wasn't expecting it to be a big deal here, but it is still a little surprising that it isn't even really mentioned anywhere.
Sorry for the lack of smoothness between topics, this is random topic week apparently. This week in church was another typical week in church where I didn't really understand a lot of what was going on because of the tagalog mixed in with the English. I didn't follow along with a lot of the message but the part I did get was the message of basically going hard or going home. He didn't use those words obviously, but that's basically what I got out of it. This life is really all or nothing. We have a certain amount of time here and we can spend it working for God or working for ourselves. So many times we spend it trying to decide which one to do. And then there are certain times when it hits you that it just doesn't make any sense to go halfway, to sit on the fence. If we are going to believe that God is real and He is calling us to do something it just doesn't make a lot of sense worrying about anything else. We worry about money, about safety, about health, about all sorts of things, but we forget that God's got things under control and we are here for Him not for ourselves. Things have been awesome here but I'm not going to say that things have easy all the time. I had a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things back home and I can sit back and think about them and think about the things I am missing out on or I could throw everything in to what I am doing here and give it all I've got to do what I know that I have been placed here to do. I could give up and say this isn't worth it or things aren't going the way I want them to go or I could put my trust in God that things are happening for a reason and I just need to keep following and He will work out the details. I didn't come to this island for me. I didn't come here for anything I would get out of it, but I came here for God and to give myself to what He wanted. I am going to give my all and I'm going to go hard because there's just no point in sort of trying, or doing decent. There's no point in giving part of my effort to teach these kids or part of my effort to share Christ with people, I might as well go home if that was my goal.
It has been difficult sometimes here because you really start to realize all the things you are missing out on back home. The fun things, the food, the opportunities, and the people. It can be hard, but the thing you don't see is all of the things I have here that I'd be missing out on if I was back home. I miss a lot of things and people from back home, but I know I wouldn't be able to handle missing out on everything I have been given here. Part of life is missing out on things. We always want what we don't have or what someone else has. We want to be somewhere else, or someone else. When we are kids we live our whole lives wishing we could be adults and do all the awesome adult things. When we become adults we spend our lives wishing we were younger and could do the things like we did when we were younger.
We need to be happy with where we are,
be happy with who you are,
strive to be the best you can be,
go where you are sent,
don't live life focused on what you don't have,
but make every moment with what you do have special.