just about as far north as we can go....

(written Thursday, February 28, 2008)
It seems like so long since I last blogged. We have been to so many more places. I think I am going to start writing blogs more on my laptop when we don’t have internet, so then I can just upload it when we go to the internet café. Our time on the internet always seems so short and rushed. I do enjoy the e-mails I have reveived from some of you; always a pleasant surprise on our trips to the internet.

This morning we were in Ballesteros in the province of Cagayan and now we are in Sanchez, Cagayen. Right now we are just about as far north as you can go in the Philippines. Our contacts were joking around saying that we should just swim to Taiwan and save money on airfare. :)

It has been raining for the past two days and it’s cooled down so much. Last night it was 73 degrees Fahrenheit in the room that Jenny and I were sleeping in. We are wearing pants and sweatshirts today! Haha. It’s crazy how fast we have adjusted to the hot weather here. If I was back at home in Minnesota and it was this temperature I would probably be running around in shorts, wanting to go to the beach! The rain has been really bad here and is starting to destroy their crops. We saw many flooded fields and houses on the way here.

During our time in Sta. Mesa, Manila at Gloria Dei Pastor Chris, Buboy, and Phil got us to try Balut, which is fertilized duck egg. We weren’t super excited about it but knew it would be a fun cultural experience that we wanted to have at some point. We had 15 day old balut, so it didn’t have feathers yet…not sure if I would have been able to handle feathers. Haha To eat it you open the top of the shell, put some salt in it and then drink all the juices out. Then you peel the rest of the shell off and add more salt. As you can see from the pictures we were a little nervous.

Then you eat the yellowish part (in one bite). It actually tasted pretty good, like an egg. I look disgusted with my first bite in the picture but I think it was just that I had to fit such a big bite all in my mouth. Then you eat the hard white part, which is what the egg white becomes. This part is hard and rubbery. It took me forever to chew and swallow, felt like I was chewing on rubber.



We enjoyed our time at Gloria Dei. It was fun spending time with the school kids and teachers, Pastor Levi, Ed, Phil, Buboy and his wife and daughter, and Pastor Chris and the rest of the Pastors that were there for meetings. Buboy’s daughter, Gwen, was so much fun to play with! She is three years old and every time she saw us she would yell, “Hello!” It was fun watching her run away from Dave and then inch her way closer to get him to chase her. She would keep saying something that we didn’t know in Tagalog, but it had the classic, “na, na, na, na, na, na. Come get me!” tone. He would chase her and then repeat her words after her and then she would run after Dave.


This is our team in a pineapple.


We spent 4 days at Immanuel Lutheran School and got to do some programs for the students and also a puppet workshop for the teachers and Sunday School teachers. We taught them about using puppets in ministry and how to make puppets.

None of us had ever made a puppet before so that was fun to experiment with before the workshop. All of their puppets turned out really well and we had a great time. The people at Immanuel Lutheran School and Church took such good care of us, making sure we had everything that we needed. It was nice to stay in one place for so long, but by Friday we were all ready to be traveling again.

It has been nice to be out of the crowdedness of Manila and into some fresh air and open spaces. We did a program at a mission station in Urdaneta, Pangasinan which was in a house, out in the middle of a rice field, with mountains in the distance. It was beautiful.


We have had help translating our closing song, “Unify Us” into Cebuano, Tagalog, and now Ilokano. It has been so neat to be able to sing the words “Unify Us. Purify Us, So that we will change the world” with so many congregations in their own language.

That message of unity within the church is so important right now, as the conflict between the two factions of the LCP (Lutheran Church of the Philippines) has been very frustrating and discouraging at times. It’s so hard for me to understand how people in the church can be so hostile to each other. Aren’t we as Christians supposed to be the ones to show the love and peace of Christ to others? So we keep doing what we do, spreading the message of God’s peace and unity through Christ.

We just finished watching the Minnesota vs. Purdue college basketball game on TV! It was funny that this was the game that we caught because Ua went to Purdue and I go to Minnesota. I was so excited because when we turned it on, near the end of the first half, we were winning. But Minnesota ended up losing 65-53. It was fun to see something from home though, even if they did lose.


This is our trusty vehicle for the next while. Pastor Rolly is our driver and the vehicle is from the Seminary in Baguio. We have already spent quite a bit of time in it, most of which I slept through. We will have a 12 hour drive coming up in a few days.


The other day, Ua, Dave, and I got to ride a carabao! (which is like a water buffalo) Those guys are huge!




One thing that has been fun for me has been the prayer before meals here in the Philippines. The grace we say at my home with my family in Minnesota is a combination of two table prayers; one that we said since I can remember and then one that I learned when I was younger and wanted us to use. So we combined them. Most visitors that we have at our house are thrown for a loop when we say two prayers. “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed. Amen. Oh give thanks to the Lord for he is good, and his mercy endures forever. Amen.” I thought this was just something that my family did; little did I know that Lutherans say this mealtime prayer all around the Philippines. Dave says he always knew my family was part Filipino. Saying that prayer always makes me feel at home!

I learned how to play guitar on one of the sing-a-long songs that we sing. So here's a picture of my debut guitar playing on "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands"! You can't see me very well but I am to the right of Dave.


Well I think that’s about it for now. Hope all is well back home. Please continue praying for the LCP.

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to everyone!

I got a Valentines Day card from the kids at Gloria Dei School today. They came running out yelling, "Ate Carly! Ate Carly! We have a Valentine care for you!" It's in Tagalog though, so I don't actually know what it says. :) The students at the school have been teaching us many Tagalog words and then quizzing us on them, to make sure we remember them. My favorite one right now is "kaibigan" (ca-ee-bee-gon), which means friend. The last two days we played volleyball against the teachers of Gloria Dei School. It has been a lot of fun and they asked to take us out on Friday night, for swimming. That should be a good time!

We visited Concordia Orphanage this morning and I stayed in the room with the infants. I held and comforted 1-3 month olds. They are so tiny, so cute, and they melt your heart. It was so good to be there, but a little hard too, knowing that they don't have parents to care for them. They kept jokingly asking us if we wanted to adopt one of them. Don't worry though, I won't come home with a Filipino baby. I promise. :) haha A few of the babies were premature and one of them was soooo tiny. You could hold him in one arm and he was so light... his name is Chrisanto. Ua got puked on, big time! The baby just kept on spitting up milk, all over Ua's shirt and pants. Haha. And then I got peed on.... I did a lot of laundry when we got back. I know that when I come home I am going to be soooooo thankful for washing machines and driers!

Well this will probably be my last entry from Manila for now. On Saturday we will be heading out to travel to churches outside of the Manila area. Hope all is well for all of you!

This one's a long one! from Manila

First of all, if you want to see pictures from our tour of Mindanao, Rev. Villos set up a website: Villos' New Dawn Picasa Site

He also posted some videos of us: Videos of New Dawn

We are now back in Manila, staying at Gloria Dei Christian School and Church, where we stayed when we first arrived in the Philippines. Coming back here felt almost like coming home and it feels good to be somewhere familiar. So much has gone on since we were last here, but at the same time it’s crazy to think that we have been in the Philippines for a month tomorrow.
We really enjoyed our time on the island of Mindanao. So here’s a few random stories that have happened since the last time I blogged.

Dave and I both ended taking a trip to the hospital on Sunday, February 3. They did a malaria test on Dave and ran some urine tests on me. It turns out that Dave had a viral infection (thankfully it was not malaria) and I had a Urinary Tract Infection. We were both pretty miserable for a few days, but our team was so good about making sure we got our rest and covering for us when needed. Once Dave and I were feeling better, Jenny got sick. After resting that day she felt better, and we are all healthy now.

Our host family in Cagayan de Oro, the Gatela’s, took such good care of Jenny and me. They made us rice porridge for our upset stomachs and made us feel so comfortable. Pastor Villos, his wife Honey Mae, and Pastor Villos’ sister took great care of us as well, making sure we got the rest that we needed.
After Cagayan de Oro we got to ride overnight on a big ship, called the Princess of the South to the island of Cebu and then from there we rode on a smaller boat to the island of Leyte. There we stayed in Albuera with the Ladlad family. Arwin, Eileen, and their daughter Kaye had spent some time with us earlier and it was great to be able to spend more time with them. We stayed in their family’s home which is right near the beach.

One night all of us went swimming at sunset. It was so beautiful!

One day we got to go out on the banca’s (small boats with wooden floaty things on the sides) and we swam out in the middle of the water. It was lots of fun but I think all of us except Dave got pretty sunburned. This was really our first day where we were out in the sun a lot. Now we know how often we need to reapply the sunscreen!

We did a program for the students of Balugo Elementary School, which is just down the street from the Ladlad residence. There were so many kids and they were so excited to have us there. Later that day Pastor Villos informed us of a baptism that he was going to be doing and told us that the family had requested that the five of us be there as sponsors/godparents. So we got to watch as Justin Valarez was baptized and welcomed into the family of God. It was humbling to be asked to be his sponsors, seeing as we had not known Justin until a few days ago. It was so special to be his sponsors though, knowing that we now have that connection with a child in the Philippines, that he will grow up knowing that there are five people praying for him in the United States.

We did a program the same night as the baptism at Barangay Stage with Christ Lutheran Church and members of the community. The videos that Rev. Villos posted were from this program. The church had a bass guitar, so I got to play it for the program! I have really missed playing it, so that was so much fun! It was a five string bass guitar, so it has an added string compared to the one I normally play. So that was a little weird to get used to at first, but it worked out fine. Halfway through the program I realized that this was our last program with Rev. Villos and Honey Mae, Arwin, Eileen, and Kaye, which was sad to think about.

I met a little friend before the program. Her name is Diana Rose and she is seven years old. One of the lady’s at the church informed me that she has no parents. She was a little shy at first but during the program she would look up at me and grin. She sang along with “Ako Anak Sa Dios” and “Unify Us.” It was so neat to see a little girl like her singing about changing the world with such hope. On the walk back to the church, Diana Rose came running up to me and grabbed my hand and skipped back to the church with me. So cute!
The next day we had to say goodbye to Arwin, Eileen, and Kaye and later on in the day, Rev. Villos and Honey. We enjoyed having them along with us and we miss them so much already. They treated us like family and taken such good care of us. These are relationships that I hope we can continue throughout the years, even though we will be far away.
The ride on the boat from the island of Leyte to the island of Cebu, was very rough. As Ua put it, “We were tossed about in the sea.” I was a little scared at some points and none of us felt the greatest after that. There were quite a few times when if you looked out the window all you could see was water….no sky. In the other window if you look over the other way you would see just sky. They came around the boat passing out “motion discomfort bags” and I felt really bad for the pregnant lady behind us that had to use one.
After our fun boat ride we had to say goodbye to Rev. Villos and Honey. Rev. Villos was with us over 3 weeks, which is a majority of the time we spent on Mindanao and he became like a part of the team. We always joked about him joining our team and replacing Dave. It’s been weird not having him around with us these last few days. We will definitely miss them.
We flew back into Manila on Sunday morning. It was an early flight and we were all pretty tired after such an early morning. Straight from the airport we went to Faith Lutheran Church to attend worship and do a program after worship. We met Honey’s cousin, Pastor Chollo who is the pastor at Faith Lutheran. It was a wonderful welcome for our first morning back in Manila. After the service we went back to Gloria Dei Christian Church and School where we stayed when we first arrived in the Philippines. It felt oddly like coming home, to a place that was familiar to us. We will be here until Saturday and then we begin traveling around Luzon.
It’s hard to believe that our time on Mindanao is already over. We really enjoyed our time there and will really miss all the people that we met.

Tinago Falls

Yesterday we went to Tinago Falls with some of the youth of Holy Trinity Lutheran Catholic Church. They are all related to Irene, our contact. Big family! To get to these “hidden falls,” you have to walk down over 400 steps! It was a long way down but it was so beautiful once we made it down there. We had a great time with the kids, taking the bamboo raft over to the falls, jumping off it, swimming, and climbing up some rocks. Our team also walked down the river a little ways and climbed from rock to rock, down the river. I have decided that this is my new favorite activity. After some lunch we swam a little more and Jenny, Dave and I swam over by the falls. It was really hard to swim against the current and if you stopped swimming you would go backwards. We made it to the rocks right next to the waterfall and climbed up. There was so much water coming down and mist that you could barely see where to climb. We made it to a little ledge and jumped off…Dave guessed it was probably a twelve foot jump. It seemed so high up but looking at the falls we were only at the very bottom. It was a long way back up those 400 steps and we were very tired when we reached the top but it was definitely worth it.

We did a program last night at Freedom Stage which is a small concrete stage in the street near Irene’s home in Linamon. In order to do our program here we had to go to the municipal building and meet with the mayor to get a permit. He was very nice and he also sent two guards to be with us when we went to falls. We have felt safe the whole time here, it was just a precaution. Most of the kids that were at our program the night before and that went to the falls with us were at our program, along with many people just passing by on the street. We guessed that there were probably 250 people there. In our program we talk a lot about unity and peace in the body of Christ. The Lutheran Church of the Philippines is split into two groups and they are undergoing reconciliation talks currently. I think that unity is an important message for them along with all of the church to hear. I don’t know how to spell it but “Calinow geekansa Dios,” (the peace that comes from God – in Cebuano) has become a phrase that is very important to us.