We made it! After 30 plus hours of traveling, we finally arrived at our final destination. Right now we’re in the first town we lived in when we moved to the Philippines. We’ve spent the last few days going through a few things we left here in storage. Termites got into some of our boxes and ate through books, towels and left us a great big MESS to clean up. Other things have been growing mold while we’ve been gone. We even found mold growing in our car. This week we head down to the second town we lived in during language school. We are hoping that our stuff down there fared better then our stuff up here but that is yet to be determined.

We’ve been checking into getting our things shipped over to Palawan and it is looking like it will be a little pricy. We’re praising the Lord that before we left the States He started to provide for this special need. Please PRAY that we would find someone who would be willing and able to ferry our car to Palawan for us. We will all be flying over to Palawan as a family and we are hoping that Jason would not have to fly back to Mindanao and ferry the car back over himself. It will be quite a trip as it has to go all the way up to Manila and then over to Palawan and will take probably about a week.

The kids are finally getting adjusted to the time change. We are 15 hours ahead of Arizona so is has been almost a complete flip flop from day to night. There have been a couple of girls here at the guest house where we are staying that Mirielle has been able to play with which has made the transition so much easier for her – Praise the Lord! Please continue to pray for her as she gets used to things here. She has been having a hard time lately as every time we go out people want to touch her gorgeous white skin. Kellan thinks the attention is great, but Mirielle isn’t exactly thrilled with being mobbed and then having everyone touch her on top of being up close in her face. Please pray for us too, that we would have wisdom in knowing how to handle these different situations.

It is funny that we could forget so quickly how things are here. Here are some “Oh Yeah”s that we’ve had since coming back.
* The Philippines must be the karaoke capital of the world. After 6 hours of hearing the neighbors sing (only a few of them had decent voices) we were ready to go crazy! You just can’t get away from it no matter where you go. Even at the mall, there are girls selling videoke CDs and they sing along in the microphones belting out Brittney Spears and Celine Dion songs at the top of their lungs.
* After sorting through our stuff we remembered what it was like to live with the smell of mold. Smoke is another smell we live with here as someone is always burning their trash.
* Driving down to the mall in the port city near by we were reminded that where you break down is where you fix it. All along the road there were trucks broken down and they simply stop in the middle of the road (only 2 lanes) and mark the fact that they are broken down and not moving by putting a few branches or rocks behind their car.
* McDonalds is a taste of home, but they always have some kind of Filipino dish that makes us wonder, or shudder. This month it was a ‘trio’ dessert - basically a sunday on top of jello. Yuck!

While we are readjusting to all of the little and big changes of being back we are praising the Lord for his faithfulness in bringing us back. It was hard saying goodbye to friends and family again and we were sad that once again we were having to leave home. However, when we touched down in the Philippines we felt like we were coming home. The Lord is truly good!

One week to go!

It is moving time again! It seems like it always comes sooner than we expected. And it always seems like the packing process makes more of a mess than I remember it making the last time. Yes, once again we have been drowning in boxes and suitcases and all of the stuff we have managed to accumulate. With one week to go we are not looking forward to leaving but we are looking forward to getting back to the Philippines. Our time in the States has flown by but it has been enough time here to feel like we have been able to get our feet back on the ground and are ready to move forward.

Some of the things we are looking forward to:
*As soon as we get settled, Jason will be able to start flying. The time here in the States has given him a chance to get back in the airplane again, and so now with all of the the rust off, he is ready to go. There is a family that moved over in to the Philippines in September and has the flight program up and running and are waiting for us to join them.
* We are looking forward to seeing our friends that we made in the Philippines.
* We have a house waiting for us. This was going to be one of my BIG prayer requests, but the Lord in all his goodness, has gone before my written request and answered my prayer. We are 'inheriting' a house from another missionary couple. That means it should be in move in condition!!! and Jason won't have to spend a month just trying to get the plumbing working (applause!!). We visitied the house before coming back to the States not knowing it would be available and loved it. It is quiet, spacious and even has a bathtub (something we have only seen in hardware stores - never even seen one in a hotel!) plus the house is run off of well water so it will be clean enough to take a bath in! It is looking like we will be here for 2-3 years. We totalled it up the other day and this will be our 14th move so we are really looking forward to being settled.

Some of the ways that you can pray for us:
* We will be doing lots of moving around when we get to the Philippines. We land and travel directly to the town we first settled in, in order to pack up our stuff that is still there. We then head to the town where we were in language study to gather all of the rest of our stuff. All of our stuff then gets put into a container so that we can ship it to the new island we are moving to. We will have to ferry our car seperately, and our family - along with the dog- will fly over. It will take a fair bit of coordination for it to come off without a hitch.
*Pray for our kids as we do all of the moving around and resettling. Mirielle is old enough now that the chaos is making an impact on her. Also pray as we get adjusted to a new time zone. Just traveling over Christmas changed Kellan's sleep schedule so that he was waking up 5-6 times a night. AGH! Pray that he will switch over and get to sleeping quickly for all of our sakes since we will all be sleeping in the same room until we get to our new house.

Mirielle loved playing in the snow at Christmas time. For more pictures, look for our photo gallery under links.

 
 

Such a typical picture. Mirielle being silly and Kellan just trying to survive his crazy sister!