August 2nd

We are back up and running here, so that's good. We have had a couple out of the ordinary events the last couple days that I can share with you - starting with Sunday.
I didn't go to Bethel like to I usually do on Sunday, I ended up going to the church in pagbilao that all of the kids go to because they were celebrating their 10 year anniversary as a church. They had their usual message, but in addition to that they had several dance and singing performances - many of which were by the Sankey kids. That was the reason I wanted to attend that church, and the kids did not disappoint - it amazes me how multi-talented so many of these kids, or young adults, are.
After service they provided lunch, and then families with kids stuck around and they played some games and hung out for a while.
And then Tuesday was a pretty eventful day. They ended school about an hour early here at Cugley, and we walked down the road and did a feeding program at the public elementary school that is about a half mile away. The Cugley kids did a few songs for the kids at the other school, a few of the teachers said a few words, and then we passed out chicken soup and bread to well over a hundred kids (I would guess). We didn't get to spend much time hanging out with the kids like we do during normal feeding programs with the church - most of the kids got their food and then went back to their classrooms. It was still raining on and off, so that was part of the reason, but pretty much as soon as we were done we made our way back to Cugley, trying to avoid all the huge puddles in the dirt road that the previous 2-3 days of rain had left.
That evening we had a birthday party for one of the Sankey girls who turned 18. In the Philippines they don't do much to celebrate most birthdays, however they do celebrate the turning of certain ages, and for girls, 18 is one of those. They call it a Debu. So we had a party in the gym for Mary Rose - she had one of her classmates escort her in to her seat which was in front of everyone, and then several people sang songs to her. She also had to dance with 18 of the guys there - each one of whom brought her up a flower when they were called up for the turn. It was kind of funny to watch because you could tell it was many of these boys first time slow dancing.
Then we had dinner and cake, and by then it was 8:30 or so, so some of us stayed and cleaned up, but most of the kids went back to their dorms because the next day was test day for the high schoolers, so they had to study and head off to bed.
Well, I am coming down to the last few weeks. It's really hard to believe that almost 5 months has already gone by. I probably won't post anything until the beginning or middle of next week since things are fairly routine and I will be seeing many of you again within the next month and we win catch up then.