Short and Sweet

Hello everyone! 

Now that it is December let me wish you a Merry Christmas! We put our Christmas decorations up right after the rock harbor team left so we have been in the Christmas spirit for awhile. And Christmas shopping for the kids is almost done. With 175 in our family, getting the shopping done early is a must. 

This past week has been pretty good and uneventful. I have had the kids read little books aloud for 45 minutes to help with reading and comprehension. It has been awesome. They love to read and do not see it as a chore. The comprehension part is slowly but surely coming. This week is our last week until January. Lots of reviewing this week. And having fun of course.

A silly but fun thing that happened this week was I helped make the combo or banana pancakes! I flipped them on the giant stove. I had a blast. A bunch of the kids thought it was funny since the stove was so hot my face was tomato red. Haha but they were delicious. 

We went and rescued four girls yesterday. God is so good. I had been focusing on what I didn't have here, when Nanay asked if I wanted to go with them. A group of us went, prayed laughed and ate. We went to a beautiful more rural area of the island. Sugarcane and rice paddies grew as far as we could see. Little towns came and went along the road. There were big puffy beautiful clouds in the sky. When we finally got to the right place we had to walk about a halfmile through just burned sugarcane to get to the house. Their house was made of bamboo. It was fairly clean though. This was the other side of the Filipino culture I hadn't seen. There was such poverty in the area. They depend solely on the odd jobs they find in the farming industry. They had no clean water just the well that was fed from a nearby stream. The kitchen was a pot over some wood. The bathroom was a bucket next to a pile of rocks outside. No beds just bamboo floors. It was a complete eye opener for me. I knew most of the kids come from poor families but I didn't know what that meant or looked like. As we were waiting outside of the house, one of our older boys started singing a Gaither song "it's time for a celebration, cuz I am a new creation". I wondered how long before the girls would be singing that song as well. When would they understand that it isn't just the physical that needs to be saved, but the spiritual as well. 

The girls are beautiful and all smiles. As it has been pouring for almost 2 hours now, I am thankful they are warm and safe within our home. 

I would like to ask for your prayers; both for me and the girls. Three of them are in my class. They understand a little bit of English and I understand almost no Ilongo. Please pray that God gives us all patience, understanding of eachother, and wisdom that I know how and what to teach them. I have been praying the Lord would give me an ear for Ilongo :) 

That is all she wrote, for now at least. Enjoy the photos of the countryside and our Christmas decorations! Till next time

God bless,

Kelsey

Update: I wrote this 2 days ago, the girls are doing great in my class! The answered my prayer by allowing another teacher to be my translator. The girls are great at math, can read English! It will be a little while before they are completely out of their shell, but once they do they will fit right in with their bright smiles.