Horses and Tigers

Here is vacation pics, installment #1. I'm afraid most of the pics included my bro and sis-in-law so the options are limited. But there are still some good ones. After we picked them up at the airport, we drove down to Subic and went to the tiger safari again as well as rode horses to a little waterfall. The horse ride was about 1 hour long, part of it through jungle trails, and we all had a blast. Ben jabbered the whole way - "Big Horsey, BIG Horsey!"The kids looked adorable in the little riding hats we had to wear.

We walked to a little waterfall 1/2 way through the ride.

And we of course got to feed a baby tiger again.

The tiger safari part was great this time as the tigers were pretty hungry and playful. It got especially exciting when our guide got the chicken-on-a-string that he was feeding to the tigers stuck under the vehicle. So, he proceded to very nervously open the door to get it unstuck. I don't know that we would have been too concerned about it - except he was obviously VERY concerned. Quite the adventure. Thankfully none of the tigers were too close by...

Next installment: our visit to the WWII historic island, Corregidor.

We're Back!

Hello again! Did you miss us? :)

We safely returned from some wonderful vacation time with my brother and his wife. We traveled all over northern Luzon and visited many special places from our childhood, and had many adventures along the way. Here is a pic of our family in front of my family's old home in Aritao. I am planning to put up pics from our trip over the next couple weeks - a few new ones every couple days. So be sure to keep checking the blog. You more observant ones out there may notice that my bro and his wife don't appear in any of the pics - yes, they really were there, and, no, we are not mad at them. Just being careful - trust you understand.

Many of you have asked about the Ipod and that whole difficult situation. Thanks so much for your prayers and encouragements; this has been so tough. We are so thankful to be able to say that the warranty actually covered it, and we got a new one! What a blessing. After much investigation, we are also confident that our helper, Mhey, was not in any way involved in the plot to take or "return" the Ipod. However, she did have MANY things she was guilty of in the whole mess, and we have had some problems with her work lately... Anyway, so we decided to cut back her hours to just one day a week. It was difficult telling her this before we left, but it seemed like the right decision, and she accepted it, and was even grateful (we would have been justified in firing her for the role she did play, albeit unwittingly). But then we arrived home yesterday and opened up our phone bill to discover that she has (again) been running up our phone bill when we are not around. Since this is not a first offense with this, we will need to let her go after all. This will be very tough to do, and we still need to ask our teacher in the morning the culturally appropriate way to do it. Then I will need to find someone new to help out part time and to fill in when our other helper is sick.

Thanks for your continued prayers with this. And keep coming back to see some great pics of our trip in the next few days!

Oh - and I want to announce the birth of Abby Renae Carver, Steve's sister's first baby. She was born on the 20th of September, and both she and Christine are doing great. I will try to put a pic on once we get one...

Going on Vacation!

Well, after this past week, our upcoming vacation couldn't come at a better time - we are certainly feeling the need to get away for a while. The kids smiles in this picture show how excited we all are. We leave on Sunday the 10th (right after Steve preaches his first sermon in Tagalog - out of Romans 6!), and we will go and pick up my (Jen) brother & sis-in-law at the airport. Then we will drive all over the northern Philippines - Zoobic, Corregidor, the tribal village where Dave and I grew up, a flight base where we spent many childhood years as well, possibly even up to the famous Banaue rice terraces. We are so looking forward to some down time and wonderful time with family. Thanks for praying for safety for us as we travel and try to find our way around. We will be back in Manila on the 20th for some Dr. appts and meetings. We plan to come home the 23rd.

As for the stolen ipod -- we still don't have the whole story, just suspicions. There were 3 people there, and 3 different stories as to what happened. All claim to have no idea what happened, but we know some of them are lying about parts... The latest development is that it was "returned" - in the sense that it was chucked over our gate outside so that it broke (or was broken before it was chucked?). We will try to send it in to see if the warranty will cover it, but it has seen a lot of abuse in the last few days, and we are not sure that they will honor the warranty because of that. Please be praying for us if you think of it - we still don't know if our one helper is on all this or not. So tough to know how to handle it with her...

This week has been awful as we have tried to wade through this mess and find out what really happened. It has been good language and culture experience, but miserable. To make it worse, Steve was gone in Bicol for nearly all of it, and our other helper was home sick! What a week!

PTL, Steve's trip to Bicol went well. We have not come to a final decision, but we at least have a town that we are leaning towards locating in!!! Thanks for continuing to lift us up in prayer - we need it more than you know.

A Trip to the Fortune Teller

Well, today has been quite the adventure. Yesterday we went out for the afternoon and left one of the housegirls alone in the house to finish up then go home. She then called some friends to come over and keep her company while she "worked". Going against the house rules, she invited them into the house, and - long story short - my new Ipod MP3 player (that Steve just bought me for our anniversary on Aug 22) was stolen. Steve went with our helper and her one friend to the school of the other guy, the one we don't know and suspect took it. He ended up in the middle of a big ordeal there at the school as the principal and guidance counselor got involved and ended up searching every student there. After that exciting cultural experience, Steve and the 2 girls left, and Steve thought they were headed to the guy's house to check his room. They arrived at his house, and there were a lot of people hanging around out front and in the foyer of their house. Steve kept asking these people questions - indirectly, in keeping with the culture - trying to get to the bottom of the situation. But he just got vague answers. He then asked what all the people out front were doing. He was told that they probably lost something too and need to know where it was. It ends up, our helper's friend had taken him to a fortune teller to find out who took it! So here Steve was sitting in the waiting room to have his fortune told to find out who took the Ipod! Much to the bewilderment of all, he walked out before it was even his turn.

The day continued to be a roller coaster adventure but with the end result being a missing Ipod and no hope to get it back. The guy has certainly sold it by now. Steve finally did leave (3 hours late) for Bicol for his survey trip there. I continued to try to track it down but to no avail. Today has been quite the adventure, full of language and culture exposure, one that we will not soon forget.

As for the Ipod, I am trying very hard to view it as "just stuff" (to quote my husband). While I know this in my head, my heart is arguing...

Please be thinking of us as we try to figure out how to handle the situation with our helper who asked her friends to come in when she knew better. She has now disappeared off the face of the earth. I am not sure if and when she will come back nor what I should say to her if she does. To top it off, our other helper is sick and Steve is gone and I have a big trip to plan and pack for! Life is an adventure...

Another Accident

Well, Ben had a wipe out on his bike today. Apparently the training wheels let him down. Poor kid got pretty beat up. Could have been a lot worse though. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to the kids (and our helper) about the importance of the use of bike helmets. There were several little cuts that could have probably used a stitch or two, but since they were all right together and going different directions seemed like stitches in one would just pull other ones wider. So we just cleaned it VERY well (that was fun!) and then put a big butterfly bandage (home-made) over the whole thing. It pulled all the cuts together nicely, and we are hopeful it will all heal well now. Please pray with us that it does not get infected!

He was so very brave for the whole thing; we were proud of him. We did bribe him with getting to watch cartoons (Go, Diego, Go!) while we worked on it.
So pathetic. Felt bad for him.

It kept oozing and bleeding so we put a cotton ball below it to absorb the drips. He is doing fine now, but I am guessing it will be sore tomorrow! Please pray with us that it does not get infected - a real danger here. Also, Steve and I take off on Saturday for a week of meetings on a nearby island. The kids will be staying with some friends/coworkers here in Lipa. Please remember all of us in prayer this next week. Pray that the kids do well with the separation, that our meetings are profitable, and that the family watching our kids (they have 2 kids of their own!) would not quickly regret the fact that they agreed to this. Please pray specifically that nothing develops with Ben's wound - especially while we are gone.

I Can Do It!

We now have another bonafide bike-rider in our family. Zach learned how to ride his 2-wheeler without training wheels this past week. He is having a blast, and is riding amazingly well - which is a good thing because the poor kid doesn't haven any brakes! Foot brakes are unheard-of here, and the hand brakes on little bikes are more for show - they don't really work because kids don't normally learn to ride a bike until much later if at all. But Zach is doing great anyhow - just dragging his feet then crashing into something when he needs to stop.

While both Steve and I have worked with him a little on this new skill, it was under Daddy's tutelage this past week that he had success. Zach has gotten very quick at it though - he and Steve raced yesterday, and even with Steve running at full-out, Zach won by a long shot.He is so very proud of his new ability, and he begs to go out and ride his bike MANY times a day. It is so good to see him enjoying it so much, and he is just too cute on that tiny little bike.

Play Time

This is what our living room normally looks like.

This is what it looked like tonight when the kids turned it into a giant fort, complete with multiple passageways, to keep them safe from the "lion" - Dad (with kneepads so he could crawl on the marble floors). Ben is under there somewhere...

Zoobic Adventure

Mikayla had a 'summer reading program' this summer, and she successfully completed 130 books! While they were mostly primers, this was a pretty big accomplishment for a kindergartner. We told her we would take a trip to celebrate if she was able to finish it (we also warned her that the reward would not always be this big!). So this past weekend we drove about 5 hours north (although it took 8 hours to get there because of traffic!) to the old US naval base, Subic. They have a several fun family activities in the area, and we were able to do 2 of them. The first was Zoobic (a zoo in Subic). There was a small animal conservatory and tons of these amazing trees. Oh - Kimberly, Mikayla's MK friend from our town, joined us for the adventure. And the 2 of them had their hair put in tiny braids for the weekend.

Zach was just too cute squatting next to the miniature horses. The cages for these animals were not very secure, and the horses got out at one point while we were touring the area. They promptly headed down to the goat cage and opened it with their noses so as to get the goats' food. At which point the goats began to roam about. We had one instance where we were in the way for where the horses wanted to go, and we were unable to get all the kids out of the way before they came trudging through. While they were not dangerous, they still gave Ben quite a fright. We also had one very large Billy goat making friends with Steve by gently butting him with his large horns.Don't worry - there is actually glass between Zach and this python!
The highlight of the Zoobic adventure was the tiger safari. We all loaded up in these converted jeepneys for the trek into the tiger hunting grounds. While there were bars covering all the openings, the workmanship was less than confidence-inspiring.
Once in the compound with the tigers, they began feeding them raw chickens. The tigers proceeded to track and hunt and pounce the chickens - which were attached to the jeepney! Made for quite the exciting adventure.
Aren't they awe-inspiring animals?
After the safari, we were given the chance to actually hold and feed a baby tiger! This 'baby' was only 7 months old, but he was huge! Very cool.
Zach was understandably a little nervous about the whole thing, but he bravely tackled his fear - and loved it in the end.
Kimberly was pretty nervous about this - her family is not quite as adventurous as ours tends to be - but she was ok as long as Uncle Steve stayed close (notice his arm next to her).
Mikayla, on the other hand, ate this experience up. She actually wanted so badly to get to hold the tiger all by herself that she very sweetly asked her daddy for one more turn. I think we need to check her finger to see how tightly wrapped around it her daddy is.
We also got to take a train around the property to tour the ostrich cage and a few other things. The boys looked too cute.
The next day, we headed to Ocean Adventure where the kids enjoyed the aquariums, a sea lion show, and a dolphin show before we headed for home.
This great pic of the four of them was taken in front of the Philippine Eagle at Ocean Adventure. We also got to see some cool wildlife actually in the wild while we were up there. While we were not that impressed with the many 'wild' cockroaches in our hotel room, these bats were pretty amazing. They were huge!
Do you see those large hanging black things in the trees? Those are bats! There were thousands of them.

There were tons of wild monkeys in that area; there were 'monkey crossing' signs everywhere. And we did see several monkeys crossing the road. This one just sat at the side of the road and watched us, even as we stopped and watched him. I think he was hoping for some food.

We had an absolute blast at Subic as a family. It was a perfect celebration - for Mikayla's completed reading program as well as our recent language evaluation (read the next post for details). We are so thankful to our Father for making it possible.

BIG NEWS!

Well, Steve and I both had another language evaluation today. The scale is a 1-9 with 9 being an educated native speaker. We have to be at a 5 before being able to completely finish full-time language study. So that has been our goal for this year. Well, today I tested out at a 6, and Steve got a 5!!! We are absolutely thrilled.

Really, this doesn't change anything as far as our daily schedule goes. I had already cut back to 2 hours a day so I could spend more time being a mom and also to homeschool Mikayla. I will continue with that schedule. Steve will continue to "hit the books" full time when he is home, but now he has complete freedom to travel as needed for survey work in Bicol, training, and other necessary preparations for the start of our ministry amongst the Agta people. There is lots to do yet to prepare for the move to Bicol, and there is a lot we have left to learn about Tagalog and the Filipino culture while we are here in Lipa. So nothing has really changed, but anyone who has ever been through language study knows how good it feels to finally reach that elusive level 5. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us and encouraging us through these past months, and don't stop now!

We leave after lunch to spend the weekend celebrating the fact that Mikayla completed her extensive summer reading program (more about that when we get back). And it seems like we have LOTS to celebrate today. :)

2nd Bicol Trip

Well, we are safely home! Steve's trip to Bicol went well, even though he came back exhausted after all the driving through the night and very little sleep down there. He feels like they got some good preliminary cultural info on the Agta through interviewing many Agtas in person, and started some good relationships. The team of 5 students he took with were a good group, and he had a good time in conversation with them. Meanwhile, the kids and I had a good (albeit rainy) weekend at Rizal. I got to read and do some scrapbooking, and the kids played hard. They especially enjoyed collecting coconuts off the ground this time - some big and some small. Here's a few pics of our weekend adventures. Oh - by the way - we are headed out again this next weekend, leaving on Friday and returning Sunday. More about where we went and why after we get back - just wanted to let you know we will be out of town.

Headed out again

Hello again. Just wanted to let you all know that we will be out of town this weekend. Steve is bringing a group of 5 cultural anthropology students down to Bicol to do a worldview survey on our people group, the Agta. He will be driving through the night tonight (Friday) to get there and driving through the night again Sunday night to get home. Please pray for safety and that they would be able to get some good information. Steve is going to drop me and the kids off at Rizal for the weekend so we can hang out with friends there rather than at home with no vehicle. Thanks for your prayers!

Climbing the walls

Ever wonder what the kids do on rainy Saturdays? Well, you can often find them climbing the walls - literally! Ben still has a long way to go before he can do it, but he tries with the best of them.

We are amazed at what a good climber Zach is already.Famous last words - look, Mom, no hands!This one was just for the pic - they are not normally allowed to climb overtop each other in case they fall. If you're gonna let your kids climb the walls, you have to have some safety rules, right?

Welcome to the World!

My sister, Bethany, gave birth to Eli Joseph on July 11. Both he and Bethy are doing well. Eli is their second baby, and our first nephew. He is a BIG boy, weighing in at 9 lb, 8 oz! But despite his size, the labor only lasted for 3 hours and Bethy is doing great. While we wish we could be there for this exciting time, we are excited for them and anxious to "meet" Eli on Skype - and eventually on our side of the world. Andy and Bethany and their 2 kids will be heading over to Southeast Asia to serve; they plan to move in October, Lord willing. Please be in prayer for them with us.

Pagsanjan Falls

A wonderful group of volunteers lovingly gave of their $ and time to come and help take care of all our kids at the conference we attended in Cebu. They were an amazing group, and we praise God for their willing sacrifice. 3 of those volunteers are with us now for a week. Randy and Rhonda Nelson are from our church in Missouri, and Janice Hansen is a new friend from a church in Kansas that prays faithfully for us. We have been having a great time with them. One day we took a trip to some waterfalls we have never been to before. We loaded up in 2 small canoes (the boys didn't come with on this trip, just Mikayla). At first the river was pretty wide, but it quickly got narrower.

Mikayla rode with the Nelsons, and Janice rode with Steve and I.The "boatmen" had to work VERY hard to pull our boats up the river as it narrowed into a stream. There were 18 sets of rapids that they had to pull the canoes up. Steve and I got some great language practice in talking with our boatmen along the way (when they weren't huffing and puffing too hard from the effort of pulling us up the rapids).
The gorge we were in felt like something out of a movie with small waterfalls splashing down the sides and lots of wildlife along the shore (some unique ones we saw were monkeys, snakes, and iguanas).
This one below is a picture of Pagsanjan (pag-san-HAN) Falls at the top of the river. Here we were able to climb onto bamboo rafts and go up behind the falls to a small cave. We even got to try to swim into the base of the falls. It was unreal how strong the current and spray was though.We all got very wet - whether or not you got off and swam at the base of the falls - from the spray and waves from the falls.
Here is a pic of our group in front of the falls. Sorry it is a little blury - the Filipino guy taking the pic must have moved a little bit.
Going back down the river was also an adventure. It was unreal how well they navigated those tiny little boats around all those rocks at top speed. It was like one big water slide.

The trip took about 2 hours altogether, and it was the adventure of a life time. We all had an absolute blast. It was about the prettiest place we have ever been. We were in absolute awe of the beauty of God's creation.