Jenn's Journalings

Flooded Streets

We’ve had two pretty heavy rains this past week…and actually it seems another one is starting as I write this.

The ceiling in my bedroom has been leaking a little during the extra heavy rain. It’s nothing serious yet, but we’ve alerted the landlord. Hopefully that will be able to be fixed soon.

I am thankful that my street doesn’t flood much when it rains. The other streets in my subdivision flood pretty badly. I have several friends who’ve been cleaning up after the floods that get into their homes. This can be very frustrating and time consuming for them, especially when it happens regularly. I know they would appreciate your prayers.

Below I’ve included two pictures of my street from this past week. This was after the second heavy rain. Just before I took the pictures someone was walking through the flood waters, and all of a sudden he started walking more quickly. I wondered why. I found out why pretty quickly – a vehicle was coming. Vehicles splash and also make the water slosh around more, so the man was trying to get out of the way.

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

Lizards

Seeing little lizards around the house is normal here in the Philippines.
(I’m not sure if they’re actually lizards or geckos or …, but I usually call them lizards.)

They scurry around on the wall, sometimes they fall out of the cupboard or climb out of a drawer when you open it, and sometimes they’re in your trash can. I remember back when I’d only been here for a couple months. I went down to the kitchen in the dark…and the trash can made noise. Our trash can is near a back window. I quickly figured out that it was just a little lizard in the trash.

Here’s a larger one that’s been hanging around our kitchen lately. (He’s probably 3/4 the length of my hand.) I caught him in the trash can the other night.

That same night I went up to my room and there was a little, tiny one on the floor. I took some pictures of it near my backpack as well. In this first picture you can hopefully see just how small he is. He’s to the right of the backpack strap.

I do think these little guys are cute…unless they fall on me. 🙂

I have some interesting lizard stories from school – one about my projector screen and one about my air con (air conditioning unit). Ask me about these when I’m home on furlough. 🙂

Christmas in Manila – Part 1

I spent a few days in Manila with friends before going to Indonesia. We were able to go to a free concert by the UP (Univ. of Philippines) Chorale; it was in a hotel lobby. They compete around the world. It was amazing!

Carol of the Bells

Have Yourself a Merry, Little Christmas

(more…)

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.

Rain in Davao

Hi everyone! I know I haven’t posted for a while. I’m loving my classes and I plan to post some fun pictures soon.

For now, here’s a video of some heavy rain this past Friday. It started up pretty quickly. You can hear how loud it is when it rains hard here. Before I started taking the video it had actually been raining even harder. Enjoy!

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.

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.