April 27th

Today was the first day this week that I have gone to the church to help with the building. It is coming along nicely on the inside - we should be ready to paint next week and lay the finished cement floor. There wasn't a lot of work to do today, it is still most work for the skilled laborers. I didn't take any pictures because it was fairly dark inside - the electrical work is almost finished.
I had another new eating experience at lunch today. We had freshly caught squid. I have yet to look up on the Internet what the black liquid inside them is, but I took a bite it all shot out and kind of surprised me - as well as ruined my desire to have any second helping.
The last few days I have stayed around Sankey and there has been odds and ends things to do (getting things cleaned at the school, mowing grass, and various things that need to be done on the farm). The kids taught me a new card game the other day, tongitz (unsure of the spelling). I lost most of the time, and as it turns out I was cheating (unintentionally) most of the time - but apparently the cheating did not work to my benefit. We have been playing volleyball lost every afternoon as well. Reminds me of last summer in mt pleasant when we played alot of volleyball. Everyone here is really quite good.
We had a birthday dinner for all the kids with birthdays in the month of April and we are currently watching a movie outside on a projector screen. The nights tend to be fairly cool temperature wise, so it is a actually quite comfortable right now. It's cooler outside than in most of the houses and buildings.
No recent pictures, however if you have access to facebook various people have been posting pictures that I am tagged in if you want to check those out. I will see if I can figure out a way to transfer some from fb to my blog for those of you without a facebook account.

April 24th

As of Sunday I have a new doo. Some of the guys talked me into getting a mohawk. It's not much of one because my hair wasn't all that long to begin with, but I somewhat match a few of the guys now.
Today was my 3rd day in a row not working at the church, and my body is very appreciative. Everyone had Sunday off, but there isn't a lot of work to do until they get the inside walls finished, and there are only a couple guys who can do those. So I was going to go out with the teachers and some of the students from Cugley, the school here, to do some promoting, but that has been postponed for some reason. So we have done a few things around here, but the last two days have been fairly relaxed. Actually, yesterday it rained pretty hard for most of the morning so we played soccer in the rain. That was a lot of fun! There were about to 4 or 5 other guyswho stayed back from working other church, so it was us and then several of the girls played. The only rule was no hands - pushing, holding and tackling were therefore quite prevalent.
Also went and saw a movie on yesterday. Movies here are very cheap - only 125 pesos, which is about three dollars (roughly 42 pesos = $1). In the states we usually try to sneak in snacks from outside. But at the theater we went to here they have no restrictions on what you are or aren't allowed to bring in - so we took in some pizzas...haha!
We had another basketball game Sunday night, which we won, and have a game tonight, and again tomorrow night - so these couple days of minimal work have been nice for that reason as well.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of how the church is coming and from our going away party for the Australians.

April 20th

Just a quick post this evening - I am going to try to go to bed early tonight.
The Australian team left this morning, but there is still stuff to do at the church so we went back today and will probably have another week or so of work. The roof is on and the floor has been raised and poured. I took pictures, but I forgot my memory card up in my room, so I will try to post those tomorrow night.
We had a going away party for the team last night - nothing exotic food-wise, fried chicken and spaghetti. And then we played some games. It was a fun night. We will miss not having the Australians here. I will especially miss them, not only because they were great people, but because they took some of the attention off of me when we went out in public. When with a group of white people the stares were everyone spread out among all of us...haha!
We had another basketball game two nights ago - won this one. They have an announced at the game calling the game play by play. So everyone at the game knows my name now, and after the game I can't tell you how many people came I to me and said, "Hey Eaton! " haha.
Pictures to come tomorrow night hopefully.

April 17th

I've got a couple days to catch you all up on - I have been trying to reply to people's emails and facebook messages the last couple nights (if I haven't gotten back with you, sorry, I will as soon as I can). And thanks to everyone for the encouraging comments on this blog...even though I don't respond I do read those and am encouraged!
This past Sunday we attended church at the place we are working on rebuilding. They had service under the shelter we built for our breaks while working. Once again I didn't understand the message, but the pastor (in english) did say how appreciative he and the congregation are for the work we are doing. Apparently they have been praying for their building, particularly the roof, to be repaired or replaced for the last 7-8 years! That's a long time to be praying for something, but despite that duration, their prayers were answered thanks to the generosity of this team from Australia. God uses Godly and obedient people to answer prayers!
Sunday night was our first basketball game in the league that I am playing with the kids. We played the defending champions (who are all university players at local colleges). We hung with them but lost by 7. The crowd was ridiculous! It was probably the most exciting atmosphere I have ever played in! We played on an outside court, and there were probably 200-300 people crowded around watching - mostly cheering for us, which was cool. They would scream whenever anything happened, be it a basket or a block, or even just a lose ball. It was a lot of fun even though we lost.
The last couple of nights I have been trying to help one of the girls at Sankey with some of her spanish homework for a college class. Trying to recall Spanish and learn Tagalog, not easy. She is going to school for elementary education, and here they strongly encourage teachers to be ale to speak Tagalog, English, and Spanish! To all you teachers, how would you like that to be a requirement for a job?
Still working on the church. The trusses and half the roof are up now. The stage was poured today, and we only have a few more truckloads to get the rest of the floor inside to the correct height.
I had pizza today!! And it was pizza hut, and it was ham and pineapple (both my favorite)! The Australian team went to visit a church they helped build a few trips ago, and I went with them, and when we got there the pastor had bought pizza, so that was a nice surprise.
I am learning all sorts of Australian phrases. For example - one of the guys had me look something up on the Internet and I went to him this morning and said "I found an answer, " he replied, "how'd you get on?" I said, "oh they have wireless Internet over there and I just used my computer." he laughed because apparently the phrase "how'd you get on" in Australia is just like asking what did you find out. Haha..I thought that was kind of funny.

April 14th

I have an assortment of pictures from various events over the last couple days.
The first few are from the church that we have still been working on. It is coming along. We got the last couple beams poured today, and we actually only worked until about 2 today - so it was a nice short day and I got a little nap in this afternoon. I had originally said that we have to raise the floor on the inside a foot and a half...I was wrong. We have to raise it a meters and the half!! The trucks of sand that had been coming could only dump at the door and we had to shovel it all inside. Today they brought a smaller dump truck and they were able to back right in the church and dump it, which was very nice. Although, the passing lines were fun when we had to haul the dirt in using 5 gallon buckets, and actually fairly effective. The picture of the girls below is a group of girls from the neighborhood that have been there everyday watching us. A couple of them speak a decent amount of English so they have been also helping me learn more Tagalog. A couple of the girls are very good singers, so I do what I can to convince them to sing while on breaks.
Tonight I went with the Australian team to restaurant in the mountains - it was neat because most of the tables were on water. You can kind of see it in the picture. They have a bunch of bamboo rafts and on each raft is a table under a small pavilion. We actually weretoo big of a group to sit at one of those tables, but we walked around the place and it was really quite impressive!
The thee night we celebrated the birthdays of a coupe of the Australian folks and we had pig. The pig below, actually. The cook slow roast the whole thing. A couple of the guys stayed back from the work site because someone has to constantly be rotating the pig over the hot coals (its about a 5 or 6hour process I think they said).
I have been feeding the monkey on a regular basis. It will actually climb on me sometimes, which is what I was trying to get a picture of, but go figure, I bring a camera and it won't do it. The the day it was on my shoulder icing things out of my hair. When I tried today it stood at my feet and picked at the hair on my legs.
One of the kids actually just brought a lizard in to show me. It's fairly big, probably about a foot (half of that is tail though). He told me that they are going to keep it and once it gets a little bigger - no surprise here - eat it! Can't wait! Haha.
We have tomorrow off - no work! I am playing in a basketball league with some of the guys and our first game is tomorrow night.
More in a couple days. Hope everyone is well!

April 10th

A building team from Australia showed up yesterday evening so we began working on on the same church that we took the roof off of last week. They brought a team of about 15 people - people ranging in ages 13 to in their 60s I would guess. Some of the guys worked on building up the walls while others of us worked on hauling "sand" (it was a lot of rocks though) in to the church because we have to raise the floor a foot and a half or so. I took a few pictures of the church, so those are below. We are supposed to be done in two weeks because that is when the team from Australia leaves. I will try to post pictures of how the building is coming along as we progress.
It's going to be another long day tomorrow, so I am actually already up past when I wanted to be, but I guess they have activities planned tomorrow evening and night for when we get back from the church. So since I won't be able to tomorrow, I wanted to post a little something this evening.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter, everyone!
We were up dark and early the morning - 4:30 so we could be at a sonrise service at 5. They had a little Easter egg Hunt after that and then we went to the beach for the morning. It was another hot day, so even though the water was super salty, it was still nice to swim.
I was pretty tired after we got back so a nap was in order and then I just hung out with the kids. I spent the last couple nights staying in the guys dorm as acting dorm parent because the actual dorm parent couldn't be here. It was fun, but I didn't get much sleep.
Just a short post this evening, but I hope you all have a good Easter!

April 6th

Yesterday I went with the youth and young adults from the church in pagbilao to help with a food program for kids near their church. I really enjoyed that! We walked around asking kids to come to the basketball court where they did some skits and dancing for the kids and then had food. It was funny, before we started I was talking to just a couple of the kids, and when I turned around, from what seemed like out of nowhere, another 15 or 20 kids appeared and where staring at me. I do my best to entertain, but not being able to speak but a little Tagalog made that interesting. We tried playing Simon says, but they didn't quite get to only copy me if Simon said, so it ended up justbeing copy what I do. (the pictures below are from that)
This morning we went to the river for some baptisms of some people from pagbilao church, and then we spent the morning there swimming. It was a beautiful river, very clear! My sunburn got a little worse though. Some of the kids and I have been using comparing skin tones as of late and we are joking that soon I will be Pinoy (Filippino).
There is another of camping here at Sankey, I spent a couple hours this evening with them. I was originally just going to go talk to them for a couple minutes, but ended up eating with them and talking with them for quite a while. I have found that people in the Philippines eat a lot, or at least offer food a lot. One thing is for sure, I will never go hungry during my time here!

April 4th

Sorry I haven't posted anything in the last couple days. Monday, Tuesday and today a group of about 10 of us have been going to a church about 40 minutes away to do (de)construction. We tore the roof off and built scaffolding because next week a mission team from Australia is coming to put a new roof on and redo the interior. We will be helping them as well, but we had to get a lot of the prep work done before they get here. We have been getting there around 7:30 or so each morning and get back around 5:00. We get there early to beat the heat, unfortunately by 8:30 its already ridiculously hot! Long days in the sun make for tired evenings!
The thing about working in the heat here is you have to decide whether you want to be a little bit cooler and wear less clothing = sunburn. Or, some of the guys were long pants, long sleeves, and a shirt covering their face so the aren't exposed to the sun, but that means very hot! I wore a shirt and hat to keep my face covered, but a sleeveless shirt and shorts and I'm pretty burnt (that's with applying sunscreen every hour or two).
This church is right on the ocean/sea (not sure which) so we have been able to swim for a little bit after lunch everyday, which is nice. We don't work on that again until next Monday when the Australian team comes, so just doing the normal chores around Sankey will be a nice little break.
I forgot to take pictures of the church we are working on, maybe next week. I did go around Sankey and take a few pictures this evening though. I am staying in the upstairs of the mission house, then there is the guys and girls dorms, Shelby the monkey, who is one of the "pets, " and then the little boy is Genesis and one of the many dogs here at Sankey.

April 1st

Good weekend! It has finally stopped raining, but as a result it has been very hot and humidity again. Saturday we went to the cour have for a graduation party-type thing for a couple of (non-Sankey) kids that attend the church. The picture below was taken there. I think all the kids in this picture are from Sankey (I didn't look to closely at).
While there yesterday pastor Bernard first asked me to sing or dance at the service this morning... Haha!! I declined, so instead I shared some of my testimony. The combination of heat and my dislike for public speaking made for a pretty sweaty experience. Luckily I took a small towel so I don't think I looked to sweaty, I think I was able to keep it under control.
Hopefully I can sleep tonight. Yesterday when cutting grass the guys had me cut the section where they knew there were fire ants. I didn't know that until it was too late, so I spent half the night awake with an itchy foot from all the bites! Haha!