Our Church Couple's Fellowship

Recently we participated with our church in the couple's fellowship. We thought you'd like to get a few pictures of our church here in the Philippines. It is a great place for worship and fellowship. The people are so friendly and welcoming.

Nate and I have actually been taking some dance lessons this summer from a couple locals. They have been teaching us the native indigenous dances of the peoples on our island. One of them includes the use of this "malong" material you see. It was fun to practice our new dance, but kind of intimidating for us white people to do it for the Filipinos! They were all so gracious and said we inspired them as city people to learn more about the indigenous people!

At the end of the evening one of the small groups sang a song, "I will be here," only they changed it to "Will you be there?" and sang it to each other. It was very fun to see! Thank you, Lord, for a wonderful church family, both in the U.S. and here in the Philippines! Here we are enjoying dinner with our friends, the worship leaders.

The Mark of the Anay

Yes, folks, pictured here is the mark of the anay. It is a very specific design and looks almost like a Chinese character. We got struck at our house with this mark.

What is the anay, you ask? Do I have any guesses? Yes, my friends, this is the word for "termites." Oh, folks, do you know how I feel about having these crawling all over our house? Thankfully, they have not made it to our books yet! (Our friends read a good book and they said, "We really liked it...the termites liked it too, which is why we can't loan it to you).

I've been staring up at the corner of our bedroom for quite some time now. As you can see, this is the view from my bed. I lay and look up at this growing brown line in the corner of the room by the ceiling. I've been wondering....wondering...what that thing is. However, I had my suspicions, and today they were confirmed by the guy who came to assess the mark of the anay. How would you sleep at night after a guy told you these little termites were circling the moulding around your room, around and around?
This is all the damage done that we can see from the outside. I wonder what is happening on the inside!!

So much destruction!

Now, the preacher in me has to make a lesson out of this amazing illustration. Please listen.

When I first discovered the anay I was cleaning the upper shelf of the closet for some guests that would be staying with us. I had the closet organized and tidy. I had everything put where it was supposed to be. From all appearances my whole house was in order.

Then I decided to move the cardboard box that was on the top shelf to see what was in it. I was thinking, "Maybe there are some decorations or candles I can use for the guests...", but instead I found it crawling with little bugs (now known to me as anay). I screamed and got sick inside.

You see, this anay is like sin in our lives. We may have everything together on the outside and may appear to everyone opening the closet door that things are tidy and in order. But inside, deep inside where no one can even see, there may be some unchecked sin that we have not even ventured near to touch or move or discover. In fact, just like the anay, we may not even WANT to discover such icky things in our closets!!

However, let me teach you a lesson about the anay in our lives....the same lesson God taught me! I didn't have time to deal with the little bugs that day. I sprayed the closet and aired it out because my guests were coming in a couple days!! (I didn't tell them what I found in their closet--of course!). I did a quick surface cover up, thinking maybe the problem went away. Yet, as you can see from the pictures, the unresolved anay in my closet ended up spreading through the entire upstairs.....around the frames of the doors....on the moulding by the baseboard...behind the desk in my office....and circling the entire circumfrence of our bedroom.

Yes, even though the problem of "anay" or sin in our lives may be icky and we don't even want to think of opening that door in our hearts, it is better to treat it properly to the depths or else it will spread and become more destructive and will spread to every other room in our lives.

"If you keep yourself pure, you will be a utensil God can use for his purpose. Your life will be clean, and you will be ready for the Master to use you for every good work." 2 Timothy 2.21NLT

OT Chronological Puzzle

Journal entry 07.23.07M

Yesterday I began work on the OT Chronological puzzle! What a task--so good for me to do myself. There is no chart I can find that has put together the OT in the order I'd like to teach it. So I work hard.

I began today just before 9am and worked for hours on the Divided Kingdom puzzle! Piecing together Kings and Chronicles with Joel, Jonah, Amos, Micah, Hosea and Isaiah. Then I came to the problem of Isaiah, which I still can't solve (do you break at ch. 9 or 10 before the time of Hezekiah?...should I teach chapter 11-66 all in one chunk?). I compared sources to get a good teaching order--correct dates and a message flow that makes sense.

Now I've worked just as many hours (only to break for lunch) on the puzzle of Judah standing alone. Zephaniah and Jeremiah go together at first, but only during Josiah's reigh. Then you have the question of Nahum and Habakkuk --when also to teach it. We go back and forth between 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles and match prophecies with Jeremiah.

I've got my Guenter prophets notes and keep going on marking trails through my Bible doing more study on the prophets like I've always wanted to. I'm eating it up like a banquet, and I have the luxury of a whole entire day alone at home. It's like a monestary.

Then after flipping and reading and marking and studying, trying to figure out Jeremiah--I finally laugh with relief when I read from the EBC:
"No commentator, ancient or modern, has seriously posited a chronological arrangement of [Jeremiah's] prophecies."
I laughed at that statement! Ha! So, we go through a maze?
It continues:
"It is too much, however, to conclude that the book is a hopeless maze."

I'm so intrigued by Jeremiah and after reading about how he is the unique, significant, historical prophet who is so closely paralleled to Jesus, I can't wait to learn more!

Before and After

Yesterday was my friend, Jeannie's birthday, so we decided to get our hair cut together. I've always loved magazines where they pose so sad and serious for the before and then all happy for the "after" pose. It's the smile that really makes all the difference--and I guess the hair too. What do you think?




After Nate saw me he said, "Wow, you look hot!", so he decided to get his hair cut too. He walked into the same place just a couple hours after I had just been there. We had fun last night picking out his "before" picture. Of course Nate is so handsome, he could not really have a "before" picture, but perhaps just a "look #1" photo. We thought we would compare hair style, glasses, and facial hair (don't let the expression throw you off, now!). What do you think?

2nd Anniversary!

Yesterday we celebrated two wonderful years of marriage! We praise God for our relationship and for His faithfulness.

Nate woke up early and biked to the market to buy some red and white roses for me--our wedding flowers! How sweet. I gave him this nice new outfit and planned the whole thing to coordinate with me for our photo shoot. It turned out great!

We have night class on Tuesday nights, so we planned for a lunch date. We went to the "Swiss Deli", a European restaurant with delicious selections. After enjoying a lovely meal and sharing our honeymoon scrapbook together, we stepped outside to catch a taxi. It was so sad to discover it was raining!

I was really disappointed that we would not be able to do the photo shoot, but Nate was sweet and flexible and was willing to do one anyway in the carport. After taking a few shots, it stopped raining!! I was SO excited! It turned out AMAZING after all because the lighting was perfect and everything was fresh and vibrant. The pictures were SO good that I am going to keep them mostly private and only post a couple here, because I'm afraid they are too good--someone out there might steal them and sell them! Anyway, we got some romantic pictures in some very Philipino scenes, and we will enjoy those pictures for many years to come.

Thank you, Lord, for this covenant of marriage ordained by You. Thank you for your grace and faithfulness to us. Thank you for pouring your love to us so we can pour our love to each other. May we have many more wonderful years together serving you, Lord!

P.S. And a very happy 64th wedding anniversary to my Grandparents! You are a godly example to us.

Sunsets We Saw--God's Creation!

I love sunsets. Thankfully we were able to enjoy two on our way back home by land and sea. I love the sunset camera setting on my new FujiFinePix.

Prior Pics

Here are some pics from our trip a month ago. After one month I finally got my camera back out (this is a long time for me!). Here in Manila we found a store named after me!
The Filipino kids were walking to school on the first day carrying their flags with them. What a busy road to be walking to school on! The Filipino school year goes from June to March.
A famous beach destination with lots of sand! Lovely! I thankfully had enough strength during my sickness to come to the ocean to enjoy some sun.
Nate had fun running down the beach like Eric Liddel of "Chariots of Fire."

Practice Parenting

I finally got over my one-month photo/camera fast. I was so sad, I couldn't get out my camera for a month. Now we are back in business here with the photos!

Saturday morning, Nate and I got a chance to practice parenting. We had four girls come over at 9am until 1p.m. Their parents needed a "packing date" so we helped them out. We had absolutely no kids stuff there, so I went around borrowing books, games, toys and making copies of coloring book pages.

We had a blast together and got along great--praise the Lord! Nate is going to be a great dad someday--look at him helping out with lunch! We served one of their favorite meals: mac and cheese, apples and chips. Yum! They said our milk tasted funny.

Nate and I had so many laughs once they left as we reviewed all their funny comments of the day. Kids have a way of being so blunt. Like on our tour of the home we took them to the guest room, which is normally shut, and Laura said, "This room is really stinky!" Normally you might take offense like, "Oh! How could it be?!" but I had to laugh and admit it was true. On the other hand this same girl said sweetly, "You have a really pretty house!" How sweet!

Nate and I had the biggest laugh when we were remembering the Monopoly game he played with the two oldest. Of course he went third, so the girls were getting ahead and buying properties. His first few turns were, 1. Income tax, 2. Visiting jail and 3. landing on one of their properties. When the oldest looked at his money and how few cards he had, she said bluntly "You're a loser!" Of course it meant that "You're kind of behind right now..." Nate later told me if he had been playing with guys he would have said, "Oh yeah, well watch out, buddy!" and then once he got ahead he would have said, "Now, who's the loser! Ha!" We were just joking, of course, with ourselves, but it was so funny to think how kids just say comments like that and we just suck it up with our own judgments on the situation. Too funny!

I think after that four-hour fun Saturday, that I am not yet ready to be a mom! They are so sweet, but I loved reading in bed alone once they left. On the other hand, their mom was tired and she had them for the rest of the day! Praise the Lord for loving mothers and fathers!!