Jenn's Journalings

Spirit Week- Fashion Disaster Day

Last Tuesday was fashion disaster day. It was a lot of fun!

I saw these socks when I was shopping and knew they would be perfect.

I think the kids look great.

Our lunch game was longest line. First, the kids had to make the longest line by having each team member lie down on the covered court. The team that stretched the furthest won.

Then they used their appropriately removable wardrobe items to make the longest line. This included shoe strings, watches, wallets, cash, lunch boxes, lunch pieces, etc.

Spirit Week- Team Color Day

Last Monday was the start of spirit week at school. First we had color day. Since the teachers weren’t on specific teams I decided to wear all 6 colors.

At lunch we played tug of war. The kids competed against each other. Then later the teachers competed against one of the teams. We won!! Last year the students won; I was really surprised and happy.

These pictures capture some funny, motivated, serious, and joyful expressions as the kids were playing. Enjoy!

MS Banquet – Frozen theme

Our annual middle school banquet had a Frozen theme this year. It was fun!

The evening began with each middle school boy finding a girl (classmate or teacher) and standing behind her chair. The boy was supposed to ensure that the glass of the girl he stood behind was full all evening. I’m glad our boys had an opportunity to be gentlemen.

We played a song game and the winning table was allowed to line up for dinner first. A line from a song showed on the screen and you would raise your hand if you knew the song. Then someone from your table had to sing part of the song. Since I helped choose song lines I didn’t guess the songs, but I helped sing one or two. My table ended up winning, but we didn’t cheat. 🙂

Dinner was wonderful! Some of our parents helped make the pasta (white or red sauce), salad, and bread.

After dinner it was time for the ice cream eating contest. I did not participate in this game, although it was fun to watch. Some teachers participated.

One of the dads was our speaker. He did a fantastic job weaving a powerful message together with some themes from the movie.

It was neat to see how God is continuing to work in the lives of our kids as the themes of the message related to what the kids have been learning since OE. In the early part of the message he challenged each of us to consider what areas we need to work on in our lives.

The key point that he ended with compared that in the movie an act of true love was needed to thaw a frozen heart and that Jesus’ death was the act of true love needed to thaw hearts frozen by sin.

I am so thankful for the dear friends and students with whom God has blessed me!

Grade 7 Play

We studied folktales a few months ago and had a short Cinderella study as part of it. The kids worked in groups to read Cinderella stories from various cultures. Our textbook has a contemporary version that uses dinosaurs as characters and lots of alliteration on the letter “d” – it’s called “Dinorella.”

The kids made dinosaur masks and we acted out the play for the elementary classes. Here are a few pictures.

OE- Friday

Friday was time to go home to Davao. We got up in the morning and helped pack up the Taal site. We took the floating restaurant boat back.

There we piled into a jeepney. I got to fulfill something I’ve hoped to do for a long time – ride on the back of a jeepney. I didn’t get a picture, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity! 🙂

This picture shows a guy on the back of a jeepney, so that you can get an idea of what I was doing. We weren’t in the city though.

On our bus ride to the airport one of our boys felt really sick. We were concerned that it might be appendicitis. We had trouble getting in touch with his parents. We told the kids what was happening and took time to pray for his healing. It was amazing to see God work. Our student started feeling better within 10 minutes. We made sure he took it easy for a while (including when we first got to the airport), but he was fine in about an hour.

Our flight home went smoothly and the kids did great in the airport. We had a wonderful week!

OE- Thursday

On Thursday we returned to base camp, made lunch, and then left for the volcano. We took jeepneys to the wharf.

Then we were on a floating restaurant boat (that was empty) to get over to the volcano site. Some of the kids were pretty tired.

When we arrived we put our things in our tents.

Then we went on a short hike to a lava flow. After that we refilled our water bottles and returned to the floating restaurant.

OE- Wednesday

Wednesday was reef day. We took bancas from the base camp to the reef. (Here’s a picture of a banca, although it’s from Google and not a picture of one we actually were on.)

My squad had a banca just for us (and our stuff and the water to took to the reef site). Our banca had some motor problems, so although we were one of the first to leave we were one of the last to arrive. We had fun singing on the way there. We sang quite a few songs; the following list tells some of them: God’s Not Dead, How He Loves Us, I Will Follow, Our God, Who’s the King of the Jungle?, Let It Go, Do You Want to Build a Snowman?, and some of the Tagalog songs we sang the day before too.  (I included links, so if you want to hear some of these songs on Youtube just click on the title.)

Here’s my girls on the banca on the way over.

When we arrived we had a bit of scuba diving orientation, site orientation, and an entertaining demo for putting on sun screen.

The squads were split into 4 groups to rotate through the activities. We started with squad time, so we had a merienda (snack) of watermelon and had squad devotions. A few of my girls went on a short hike with another squad. Here’s a few of the pictures they took.

The next activity was either scuba diving or a craft. 3 of my girls went diving and the rest of us painted a rock. It was fun.

Next we went snorkeling. The water was a bit cold, but then it was fun. We didn’t get many pictures since we were swimming.

Our last activity was the squid dissection. It was pretty cool!

We had free time, dinner, a speaker, and then squad time. We had great squad devotions this evening.

We sang on our banca ride back to base camp the next morning too. We didn’t sing as much, but we sang lots of praise songs. The banca driver talked to me afterward. He was encouraged by our songs and said he was Brother ____. It was neat that we were able to minister to our banca driver on our way between sites.

OE – Tuesday

On Tuesday my traveling group stayed at base camp. In the morning we built sand castles.

Then we had ministry time at a local Filipino elementary school. We took lunch to the students and played games with them. My squad had 3rd grade; there were 78 kids in one room. It was really full! After everyone had food we gathered together for a Vacation Bible School type lesson. We sang songs with the kids – in Tagalog and English. There was a Bible lesson on Joseph, and our kids helped act out portions of the story. The last couple pictures are a few of my girls eating lunch on the way back to base camp.

The special event at base camp was the chicken kill. We had to kill our chickens for dinner. It was actually kinda cool. (Please note: These pictures might not be appropriate for small children or squeamish people.)

Then we had free time for a couple hours before preparing the rest of our dinner. The kitchen crew boiled our chickens and then my squad chose to use the rotisserie to BBQ them. We also cut up potatoes and carrots and cooked them in foil in the fire. Our dessert was muffins poured into orange peels, wrapped in foil, and baked in the fire. They were amazing!!

OE – Monday

OE this year was Victory on the Volcano. We flew out of Davao VERY early in the morning; I think we met at the airport around 3:45 or 4 am.

Here’s our group~4 adults & 42 students.

We had a 3-4 hour bus ride to base camp after arriving in Manila.

Here’s some of the traffic.

There’s always something interesting to see out the window ~ like unique water towers.

We arrived at the base camp early, but that turned out ok. I was thankful for some down-time after the travel. Our kids did great…despite the many “are we there yet?” questions. 🙂

Base camp had a dorm, swimming pool, kitchen, chapel, basketball court, and was on the beach. My kids took some beautiful shots at the beach.

The first day of OE consists of travel and some orientation. Each group does their squad intro and we have a speaker in the evening. You may have seen clips of the squad intros if you watched the videos in my previous post.

OE Overview

Someone from Faith Manila made a video about our Outdoor Education trip in February.

The squads from my school are the following: Jolly Jalajala Jellos, Indian Heaven Angels (my squad), Lethal Bachelors, & On-Take Off. (Each squad had to include a volcano name in their squad name.)

Also, I made the slideshow with pictures from our students. The songs in the background were 2 that we sang during the week and the kids really enjoyed. I hope you enjoy these 2 videos!

Look for coming posts with lots of pictures and descriptions of each day of the trip.