¡Ay Mi Madre!

Since we last updated we have been on a wonderfully relaxing retreat. We have realized how much we take for granted after experiencing two nights with air conditioning and hot showers (without buckets) at Ponte Vedra. We had the opportunity to sit on the rocky beaches of the Caribbean in solitude, finally being able to refoucus our minds and process our experiences. This time away from our host families provided us with the space we needed to actually think... and grow as a team. Don´t get us wrong, we love our hospitable host familes, though we have found that they love us so much they never want to leave us alone! Balancing our family life and our work life has been a great challenge that will prepare us for our futures (we thought you parents would appreciate that insight!) but, really both expereiences are very dense and make for long days. The Domincan coffee has been helping greatly though! (If you are lucky we may even bring some home)
For the last day of our retreat we took a road trip to the border of Haiti, it was very surreal to imagine that life in the Batays is better than life across that fence! The end result of the road trip lead us to one of the most breathtaking beaches on the Southern Coast of the DR...Bahia de las Aguilas. We spent the day snorkling and eating fried chicken at a private beach only accesible by a row boat that we packed 17 people into. We have come to appreciate God´s beautiful creation in a very personal way here.
We are back at work in the batays. We have been partnering with a local eye doctor, performing eye exams and extending the opportunity to those who need various corrective eye surgury and or glasses. We have learned that honey eye drops are probably not a good reccomendation. Though this may sound light hearted, it was a disheartening reality we wittnesed while treating an older almost blind man who had been using that remedy. When we are not working with the Doctor we are performing door to door health exams for sponsored children in the batays. To be invited into the houses of so many has been very eye-opening to the living and health conditions these kids face.
All in all we are healthy and have discovered how much we need to depend on God to keep us alert and give us strength and patience. We can not believe that we are half way done! Pray for energy for us in the last few weeks that lie ahead of us. Also, pray that the Lord keeps teaching us new lessons that we can bring back to the states to share with you all. We love and miss you all very much. Dios Les Bendiga! ps look how far our spanish skills have come! Until then ..
Alicia
Lauren
Elisa

Team Ireland is in fact still alive!

Hello all!

Sorry we haven't had time to update! We still don't actually have time, but we wanted to make sure everyone knew we are still alive and kicking, serving God!

Team India (I couldn't think of a good title)

Attempt 2. The good part about my last post being deleted is that now I get to write about more stuff. First, I want to pick up where Antje left off because I feel that the couple of sentences about our meal to celebrate the 4th didn't do justice to it. I think I speak for us all when I say that food is the thing we miss most about home (just kidding,it's for sure you guys but food is second!). That's not to say that we don't enjoy the food here because we definitely do, as Rita is an amazing cook, but eating American food made us realize just how much we miss it. The girls ended up getting good 'ol fashioned cheeseburgers, while I got filet mignon (about 20oz. of filet for $8? Yes please!). Dexter decided to order a "Whopper" which we thought was the same as the other burgers but with different condiments. To say we were wrong would be an understatement. It was literally the size of his head and weighed 5 pounds. Even if that's an exaggeration, it's not much of one?the thing was HUGE. Anyway, finished the ridiculous amount of food, which was a team effort and we topped the meal off with some apple pie and a nice food-induced coma on the drive home. Great conversation, great company, and way too much food? Perfect way to spend the 4th abroad.

On Tuesday of last week Prem took us to the India Bible Society headquarters because he had a meeting to attend there. While he was in his meeting we got to look around the exhibit that they had there, which was basically a visual display of the history of the Bible's translation into different languages. It was really interesting seeing some really old versions, some as old as the 17th century. By far the best part, for me at least, was seeing a piece of the Qumran Scrolls (aka Dead Sea Scrolls). The particular piece we saw was from the book of Isaiah and dated back to the 1stor 2nd century BC. My parents should be happy to know that contrary to my previous belief, there really are things older than them out there (just kidding, love you guys). They also had some other cool novelty biblical things like the entire Bible on one page and the book of John made into an image (I can't explain it, but a picture is worth a thousand words...literally, I guess)

I wanted to take some time to write about a pretty cool opportunity that Dexter, Antje, and I got to experience. On two consecutive days last week a teacher at the school was absent and Rita asked us to fill in as substitute teachers. This particular class was the Vocational Training class, which is a class for some of the older kids where the emphasis of the curriculum is put on practical life and job skills. The first day was...let's say "rough". Antje was working on another project for the first day so it was only Dexter and me running the class. We were initially kind of hesitant to be assertive with our authoritative role. In addition, the kids' only previous perception of us was as the goofy American kids who liked to joke around and play games. This DEFINITELY did not bode well for our control of the class. At several points during the day we told the kids to do something and they simply replied "No." That was frustrating, to say the least, and made us feel like we had lost control of the class. However,by the end of the day I think we had figured out the necessary balance of being assertive yet not unapproachable. This balance went a long way the next day. The kids were much better behaved and Antje being there made it much easier to give each kid more attention. Overall, it was a very teaching (yet positive) experience.

-The Team's worst blogger (Brian)

Many Things from Team Kenya

What We've been doing:
1. Oh yeah, we climbed that mountain. And, proving that the world we live in is incredibly small, on the way down the mountain we met two people who are members of University Prez. And they had been on deputation before! God is Good...and very funny.
2. Every morning at 7:15 we have devotions on the porch with the employees. We sing hymns. Our favorite is when we sing "What A Friend We Have in Jesus" in kiswahili. There's bible trivia. We lose. I'd like to see you point out what territory the twelve tribes of Israel each got on a map.
3.We play soccer every saturday and sunday with the kids. Amy laughs whenever she gets the ball. Mindy looks at the ball, doesn't know what to do with it, and trips over herself. The kids seem to think we do "baby kicks". I think its because we don't hit anyone in the face when we get the ball, which they do often.
4. We have formed a friendship with our driver James. He is filled with wisdom, and answers all our stupid questions about Kenya, even the ones about the Lion King......
5. We get to go to church with the Kids on Sunday. Abby knocked a pew over while greeting the congregation.
6.Chipatis are really good fried bread circles. However chipatis with ants are not.
7. First week of games went well. Megan:19 preschoolers-dead inside. Abby: Art-tried to recreate middle school geometry project. Mindy and Amy: Music--taught songs in hyper speed.(Amy can't say the word gush without laughing fyi)
8. Twice a week we get to attend devotions with the kids at night. THEY ARE EXQUISITE! when they pray. and all the time pretty much.
9. Today we walked through Kibera, which is one of the largest slums in the world. Can't even describe it. It was so much to take in. But the 3 guys that showed us around were amazing christians and it gave us hope that they had such strength when they are faced with such extreme poverty.
10. Apparently we will be teachers when school starts because they are short staffed. Prayer needed!

Signing Off,

Amy Wagoner x 4

Добар дан иѕ Београда (Hello from Belgrade)

We thought we'd type the whole blog entry in Cyrillic, but we didn't think you'd all appreciate having to translate the whole thing.

We've really seen God working through our team this week in really amazing ways. Last week was really exhausting, with teaching English in the mornings, coffee dates in the afternoon, and late nights. Our team was looking for a way to relax and enjoy each other's company, and God definitely was faithful to us in that!

Last Friday, we went to the USA vs. Finland basketball game as part of the Universiade, basically the Olympics for University Students held here in Belgrade until July 12 (http://www.universiade-belgrade2009.org/). We found out Quincy Pondexter was on the US team, so of course we had to go see him play. We wore our UW stuff to show our Husky pride all the way across the world, and we went up to him after the game and managed to get a few pics with him. We saw him again a few nights ago, and have enjoyed seeing the US team in action. Hopefully, they'll play for the championship this Saturday. They beat Serbia by 2 points last night, so we have enjoyed reminding all of our Serbian friends about the US Victory.

This weekend was also some really great, relaxing team time for us in Novi Sad. We took a bus to Novi Sad on Saturday (about an hour and a half north of Belgrade) and visited Vanja, one of the former interns at the INN. Novi Sad was incredibly beautiful, very relaxing and a great way to slow down. It was fun to see how the Austro-Hungarian Empire influenced the region, since Belgrade was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. There are many cultural and architectural differences that still exist today. We really hope that we can go back to Novi Sad sometime soon, and get to know more of the EUS students that live there, and of course spend some time with Vanja, who was a great hostess.


Last night we had our second big party with EUS students. It was held at a new coffee shop near the University student housing, and it was a huge success. We had about 10-15 students show up, in addition to some of the EUS staff members. Some students even traveled down from Novi Sad to enjoy the evening. We hope to continue to build relationships and follow up with the students we met last night, as there were a few girls that we met that aren't involved with EUS and are really excited to get to know us.

Thank you all so much for your continued prayer for our team. You can be praying for the students that we've met, that Jesus would open their hearts to hear the Gospel. We are learning how to slow down and be still, so continued prayer for strength and rest amidst our busy days would be wonderful. We also pray that Cassie doesn't contaminate the rest of the team with her cold. It's not the swine flu...or at least we pray it's not.

Ljubav (Love),

The Seattle Dragons

Greetings from Mekele!

 

So about the last blog…..we just want to clarify that everything we said in that blog is completely true. Minus the thing about Justin and I not getting along because team dynamics are great! We just wanted a blog to be entertaining for you all to read.

 

This past Saturday we had a carnival for all of the kids which they loved. Played games such as 3-legged race, dizzy bats, face painting, limbo, etc and all of the kids got a little prize bag when they left which is a pretty big deal considering prizes aren't given out too often. Then to celebrate the birth of our country we went to the Nykamps house, 18 of us total (Irish, English, Canadian present) and we had a big BBQ with REAL hamburgers, baked beans, and potato salad. We finished the night with singing patriotic songs and playing catch phase.

 

The North Carolina team just left this morning, which will be a weird transition for us because they have been such a blessing and so much fun to have around. They performed a little puppet Bible story every morning for the children and they had SO many children lined up (usually about 100) outside our gate at around 7am,  a little frustrating for us girls because it was our house and the program didn't start till 9 so they would be pounding on the gate yelling our names.

 

Today is a "day off" for us. We are planning for the transition that starts tomorrow. We will be teaching English classes every single morning so we are attempting to prepare a couple of lessons. They cap the classes off at 60 children so we will see how it goes… The rest of the day we are just spending some team time downtown and relaxing.

 

We are planning this weekend to go to Woodrow (?) to visit some rock churches. Its about a 3 hour drive through the countryside so we are looking forward to that. Women's and Men's Discussion have been going on and so far they have been awesome. The topics that arise have been really interesting and God has allowed us to talk about some taboo topics in this culture.

 

Thank you so much for all of the prayers. Please continue praying for energy and strength to get through each day, health and safety, pouring our love onto each one of the children, and for personal growth in our relationship with the Lord. He has been teaching all of us so many things that it is almost overwhelming to take everything in.

 

Hope you appreciate this less sarcastic blog.

Love, Alyssa, Amber, Jason, and Justin

 

P.S No running water or showers, so continue to pray for that

P.S.S Matt we don't know what you were talking about there is TONS of sugar here. It is actually overwhelming.

quick update from the DR

we have been running around all over the place for the last few weeks... sorry it's taken so long to update!! here's a little bit of what we've been up to...

1. buying live chickens at the market.. and carrying them on conchos to the mission house...
2. teaching english classes every afternoon (lauren in algodon, elisa in los robles, alicia in don bosco) to varying degrees of success and noise making
3. helping out in the clinic every morning, today we finally finished updating files and next week we hope to start working in the bateyes so that yanet (the head nurse) can have a set of files for all the kids in the clinic AND the bateyes... so its much easier to access them.
4. we've had various adventures at the hospitals... lauren got sick on the 4th of july and had to run to the emergency clinic that night. everything's fine, but it was an interesting experience of being IN the health care system and dealing with some sort of a language barrier. alicia witnessed a concho accident and her family drove the victims to the public hospital... which was another experience in itself. people all over the place, little sanitation, sounds like it was chaos and defnitely an insight into what's going on in the public sector.
5. tomorrow we leave on a 3 day retreat at the PonteVedra hotel that we all know (almost) and love. we're going on some adventure in the middle but who really knows where. but really, a midway retreat?? its only been 3 weeks. but that's almost midway which is a little insane.
6. all in all, our spanish is getting better and better and we are more or less as adjusted as we are going to get to life here. the reality of what we are seeing is starting to hit us a little more, so we're working through that on a bunch of levels. but we are loving our time and the experience has been great :) we'll give more of an update when we're all together, this is lauren from an internet cafe with her host brother!!

we would love continued prayers for health, safety, and wisdom as we try to figure out everything that we are doing and seeing.

love from barahona,
lauren
alicia
elisa

the island life (issue II)

highlights since the last time we wrote:

1. drank iced vanilla dark roast coffee jelly caffe lattes from Starbucks!! basically an iced vanilla latte with chunks of coffee flavored jello-stuff. you know how it is when you drink bubble tea and than you get a surprising blast of tapioca balls? that is exvactly how it is. quite interesting how there are Starbucks on pretty much every corner near our house, are we in some sort of Asian Seattle?!!
2. Saw Transformers 2 in the theaters with our host dad for our first official bonding outing. Lets just say due to sitting in the front row, Britt had to visit the comfort room because her chunky latte didnt agree with her! muah ha ha ha. fun regardless, though :)
3. We have discovered public transportation here now!!. It is very convient but a tad interesting being squeezed into a small box with hundreds of other moist (aka sweaty) people.
4. On Saturday we had our first college Bible study which takes place at our host families house and they made it Fourth of July themed!! Yeah for their kindness out here. So we ate very American food and it was a hoot seeing some of the locals wearing red, white, and blue that day. there were some people from the USA and a few regular locals in the group. it was great to get to see the body of Christ from around the world in action.
5. Sunday we went to our first church service at Union Church of Manila and like everywhere else here were very kindly welcomed. We always get very grand introductions everywhere we go so that was loads of sweetness. The service was really intriguing and just so everyone knows, the head pastor at UCM used to be the Worship Pastor at UPC five years ago (Pastor Steve) and we feel that .is a very special connection that we have a fellow Seattlite all the way out here in the Philippines!! After service we were introduced to the college group that we will be doing a bible study with every Sunday while we will be here. Most of the people are between 16 and 19 because ppl graduate HS at 16 here then go off to college! We did some worship and prayer which was cool.
6. At lunch after church yesterday we ate ox tail! Nothing goes to waste out here. In my opinion, it tasted like a small chunk of flavored fat. Really scrumutous huh? Per person the meal was about $5-and that is at a gourmet restaurant!
7. I really bizzare thing to see here is how there are aisles upon aisles of skin whitening lotions!!! Dark skin is considered ugly so most people sadly try very hard to lighten their skin. We asked and found out that they have this mentality because they want to look like American celebrities. Also, most ads are are about 98% white models, it is really important for me to stress how idolized whites are here. Because of the idolization, we get stared at so incredibly much no matter where we go. Slightly uncomfortable at times but than again it is flattering that they think we are so beautiful. (especially how most of the time we look like living hell due to the fact that it is like living in large sauna here!) That might be a weird thing to blog but tis the truth.
8. Mikey got in first place out of 21 people during lazer tag yesterday!! The rest of us were so proud to be American after his beautiful victory against the Filipinos we played against! We are allowed to say this because they (college ministry kids we were bonding with) said our skin would glow while playing lazer tag. Ashlynn told them it was because he has naval training....they bought it.
9. Today we took the train to a flea market....not sure where we were but it was nice getting to see a new area. We were really confused at why there were penis shaped ashtrays at about ten of the stands....do Americans like genitalia themed sovereigns? On a brighter note, we saw a few Catholic churches and nice Filipino statues. John Fay highly enjoyed the more historical sites we saw today.
10. It is very saddening to see how much need and poverty there is everywhere. Sure we live in very nice accomadations (nicest area in the entire country) but if you just drive about 5 minutes down the road it is a completely different world. To try and paint a clearer picture, most of the Philippines (at least the greater metro Manila area) looks like one of those TV commercials you see were they show extremely saddening imagines of straving children with flies all over their bodies living in the slums asking for support. The people that Habitat helps out have an annual income of about $500. That is about $4 a day if you are lucky. It is very hard to witness and we would like to ask for prayer for the people we seeing living like this. Seeing this on a daily basis has really reaffirmed our team why we are here in the Philippines and how much our outreach is needed.

Fun Filipino Fact: 20 million people live in metro Manila during the week to work. We fall just behind Tokyo. Also, all the grocery workers (that are female of course) wear uniform dresses and heels! Same with the women security guards. So professional here!!

Words of Wisdom: What do you call a person that can speak three languages? A: Trilingual. What about a person that speaks two languages? A: Bilingual. What do you call a person that speaks only one? A: American. -Joke cracked by a college kid here.

Happy 4th of July from Manila

We started our work with Habitat for Humanity on Wednesday at a site in the city of Pasig where Habitat is building two 120 unit buildings for families that are being kicked out of their homes, on the Pasig River, so that the government can "beautify the area." Everything is done by hand here, so we spent two days making bricks, cutting re-bar, and bending re-bar.

TEAM KENYA: YES WE ARE ALIVE

JULY 3, 2009
1. Heathrow: missed flight to Nairobi. 10 hour delay. Dead inside.
2. What is Chutney? and why was it served for breakfast on an english muffin with cheese on British Airlines? Cold. we wanted to know.
3. Rerouted through Tanzania. Bird in airport. Amy: "Smells familiar."
4. Megan's first cultural misunderstanding: Employee: "welcome!" Megan: "oh i'm from seattle"
this may have been funnier due to the 40 hours already traveled without sleep...
5. Took propeller plane to Kenya where we were served mango juice and chicken pitas. best airline food yet.
6. 70 year old man got out of seat on flight to Tanzania. His pants were too loose, they stayed in the seat, his bare butt did not. Amy was across the narrow isle; needless to say, she was mooned.
7. Went to Massai Market. Got seriously ripped off by our inability to bargain well. We'll learn. (except Abby who wanted to run and cry...never want to go back)
8. Roads: no rules. there are giant holes. and they play chicken.

ON A MORE SERIOUS NOTE: Blessings in disguise:
1. Due to our flight rerouting, we flew directly over Mt. Kilimanjaro on our flight from Tanzania to Kenya. Incredible. Also, within 10 minutes of leaving the airport, giraffes were sighted. This wouldn't have happened if we came on our original flight which came in late at night and it would have been too dark to see them.
2. On our flight to Tanzania, Megan was able to talk to 2 girls from Denmark who were atheists but curious about the gospel. God really provided Megan with this opportunity to share Jesus.
3. Not that we needed it, but we were given more team bonding time and we were able to see each other at our worst and we avoided all conflicts where they could have easily happened.
4. We've been here 1 day and the children know our names and call us "auntie." Words cannot describe our children. It will break our hearts to say goodbye.
5. Everyone here at the compound is unbelievably generous and the Kenyan people are really friendly and faithful. We had devotions with the village staff this morning and their knowledge of scripture was unmatched. We got to sing "What a friend we have in Jesus" in Swahili and it was awesome.

Tomorrow we're climbing a volcano.

Signing off:
Amy Wagoner X4 (our airport greeting from our driver)