Jenn's Journalings

Clouds & God’s Faithfulness

I went to Bukidnon for 4 days during this school break. I really enjoyed all of the scenery (mountains & clouds) while being out of the city.

As I looked at the clouds I was reminded of a song that I really like (“I Will Look Up” by Elevation Worship), and for the rest of the trip the clouds were reminding me of HIM.

The two lines that kept repeating in my mind were “I will look back and see that you are faithful / I look ahead believing you are able.” I hope you enjoy these pictures of God’s handiwork & can also be blessed by this small reminder of his faithfulness.

All the worries of this world
I will lay them at your feet
Surrender every anxious thought
For perfect peace
Your perfect peace

All the loved ones I hold dear
All my hopes and dreams and all my fears
I will choose to trust your name
In everything
With everything

I will look up for there is none above you
I will bow down to tell you that I need you
Jesus, Lord of all
Jesus, Lord of all

I will take you at your word
Jesus you have taken hold of me
All my life is in your hands
You’re my strength
You’re my strength

I will look up for there is none above you
I will bow down to tell you that I need you
Jesus, Lord of all
Jesus, Lord of all

I will look back and see that you are faithful
I look ahead believing you are able
Jesus, Lord of all
Jesus, Lord of All

Prince of Peace
Perfect Healer
All my life, all my cares on you
King of Kings
Mighty Savior
All my life, all my cares on you

Summer Vacation – Beach Trip

Summer break started a couple weeks ago; I went to the beach for a few days with friends. I relaxed and enjoyed taking some scenery pictures. I thought I would share some.

There was this pretty purple orchid (or some kind of flower).

I don’t remember seeing this type of flower until this trip.

I liked this view from our porch.

Here are some beach pictures:

And some sunset pictures:

Korea 2014

In November I went to ICEC Asia 2014 in Korea.

I know this is a little late, but here is a Smilebox with some pictures from my trip.

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Below I included a few more pictures/videos.

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!

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 – 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.

Fish Spa

This is the second time I’ve gone to the fish spa, although I didn’t take pictures the first time. Basically the little fish eat the dead skin off your feet. It tickles at first, but then you get used to it. It’s different, but it’s a lot of fun!

FYI- If you notice the red spot on my left foot that is a scab from kicking some coral while swimming a few weeks ago. That is not a fish spa injury. 🙂

You can hear the relaxing music they were playing in the spa if you listen to the audio in this clip. However, you don’t lose anything by just watching the fish swim around.

School Carnival (w/ dunk tank)

On Friday, November 15, we had the school carnival (fairy tale / fantasy theme). This is put on every other year; International Day occurs during the other years. Different grades have different booths and the kids and parents and teachers take rotations manning the booths. The 7th graders had a dunk tank, which our employees built. It was great! The kids asked students and teachers to take shifts in the dunk tank.

People purchased tickets and each booth had a sign identifying how many tickets were needed.

3rd grade had a Rapunzel rope for people to climb and then they went own the slide afterward.

4th grade had a bean bag toss game. If you landed on a square with a frog you had to kiss a frog (there was a bucket with a bunch the kids caught from around school). If you really didn’t want to kiss a real one you could kiss the plush one. Then you could get a piece of candy.

I think it was 2nd grade that had the limbo game.

5th grade had golf games with a Minecraft theme.

Here’s the first grade booth.

8th grade had mystery boxes. The kids were searching for keys amidst the dragon intestines (spaghetti noodles) and other “nasty” substances.

The high schoolers had a face painting booth.

The 6th grade booth had water guns to shoot off ping pong balls (the heads of giants who had captured a princess). (I think that’s the proper explanation of this booth.)

The 7th graders had a dunk tank. Our employees built it during the 2 weeks before carnival. It was a big hit! Most of my pictures are from this booth.

The 7th graders took shifts being in the dunk tank (some of them), collecting tickets, retrieving the soft balls after a person threw them, and manning the back of the target in case it malfunctioned (and the person needed to be dunked manually).

Mr. Becker, our band and music teacher, took a turn in the dunk tank. This is his oldest son dunking him.

My student teacher took a shift.

Some of the students were so excited to dunk a teacher.

Some of them threw really hard too!

The wooden target fell off, so here it is being attached more firmly. The throws were so hard it loosened the screws.

Some of the high school students took shifts as well.

There was always a line of people ready to have a throw at the dunk tank!

This kinder student had a great arm.

Even some of the parents enjoyed dunking people.

One of our middle school teachers, Mr. Miller, had a rather long line.

I took the last shift in the dunk tank.

After drying off a bit a couple of the girls wanted a picture. We had a fun day!

Spirit Week – Part 2

I just realized I never posted pictures from the rest of the week. I realize this is about 2 months late, but here is part 2!

Thursday was nerd day.

Here are some of our middle school boys.

And some of our middle school girls!

Some of them really got the look down well!

And others took a creative approach!

Friday was backwards day. My look only lasted before classes began.

Some of the kids looked almost creepy with how well they did their costumes.

Here are some of my girls.

And some of my boys.

One of our teachers shaved part of his head and had a face there!

Spirit Week – Part 1

We just finished spirit week here at Faith Academy Mindanao. It was a lot of fun! I have a feeling this post will contain many pictures so I may make it more than 1 post.

We first had team color day and I was helping with the yellow team. I didn’t get a picture of myself, but here’s one of my team. I had students from kinder through grade 8.

Monday was sports day. I decided to dress like a runner (not super creative but that’s what I was able to do). 🙂

Here are some of the students on my team.

Tuesday was favorite character day. Another teacher let me share her idea and dress up like a minion. I couldn’t see too well through my mask. The kids were creative, but I didn’t get as many pictures this day due to my mask.

Here are two of the girls on my team.

Wednesday was season/weather day. I dressed up like a thunder cloud with lightning.

We had lots of creative ideas on this day. Here are the four seasons (baby sister joined for this one too).

Here we have the news reporters for the storm and a few ideas for the rainy day look.

Here’s the rainbow!

Here is one of my middle school girls as Miss Autumn.

Here’s winter / snow.

Next we have a poor boy who went in the sun and forgot his sunscreen. Great job with the pretend sun burn!

Here’s a storm cloud and rain.

And here is a tornado!

This is another of my middle school students. She looked fantastic; the complete outfit didn’t last too long in this tropical weather though! It’s just too hot.