Passings

This is a sad post.

If you all can be in prayer for my friend Gigie, that would be good. Her dad passed away quite suddenly from a stroke on Tuesday. She was able to go down to her family's place and be there for the funeral and lead worship one of the nights.

And also pray for the Gunderson family. Dennis and Jeri started the ministry of running the baby home and birth clinic we have been working at in Antipolo. Dennis passed away, also very suddenly, from complications from pneumonia on Wednesday night. He had been sick since Friday with some flu like symptoms, and by Sunday he was feeling a bit better, but Wednesday he still wasn't better so they went in to see the doctor, and he was admitted to the hospital very shortly after that. His son-in-law, Darrin, wrote this in an email that was sent out..."At 8:21 last night (Wednesday, May 16, 2007) Dennis Gunderson joined the object of his trust in glory. I do not know a man who has more thoroughly 'made the Lord his trust,' and I am confident of his reward."

I didn't know Dennis too well, I mostly saw him in passing for a few minutes, and I had a few conversations with him. Katie knew him a bit better, as she spent time working with him and the baby home last October. She said that she's known very few people in her life with a passion like his, and it is sad to lose that passion for the Kingdom here on earth. We know Dennis is rejoicing where he is at, and I think that there is also a call to those of us who knew him, to pick up a piece of that passion, that banner he was carrying, and to carry it on ourselves.

Please pray for his family, his wife and daughters living here in the Philippines and his sons living in the US. And pray for the ministry to continue with strength and vision!

98 degrees

Okay, well not quite...but right now it is 91 degrees Fahrenheit in my room, with the air conditioning going, and it feels cool. =) Wonder how hot it is outside. I wonder also about how I've adjusted to the heat. And about how I will adjust when I'm not in it any longer. =)

Well, on Monday night, I tried balut for the first time. Balut is a Filipino delicacy, that is made up of a fertilized duck egg, that is boiled and eaten at different stages of development. Kind of crazy that I've been in the Philippines for over a year and a half and haven't eaten it yet. I've watched people eat it, but was waiting for the time when someone would insist that I eat it, and there was no getting around it. This was one of those times. It was in the kitchen of the Antipolo clinic, and a friend named Thyra, who is helping out for a month, had an extra balut that she pulled out and insisted that I eat. So I figured I'd better....I couldn't look at it though. I thought if I did I might gag and not make it much farther. So that taste is not too bad...a little like chicken soup. You eat it with salt and vinegar. I didn't experience any cruncy bones...so I'm thinking it was an earlier egg. I didn't get a picture of the occasion, but I did find a couple of old pictures of friends eating it.
I felt pretty good once I had finished it. And Thyra called me a "true missionary". =)

Mike contemplates the balut egg...
Putting on the salt....
I'd say it's an experience that is not forgotten....

Oh yes, and they only sell balut at night...usually after about 10pm. And there are Filipinos who love it, and some who won't eat it.

" I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our buildings and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equals, that we had eaten dinner with prostitutes, held them in our arms, opened spare rooms for them and loved them and learned from them. I was just another stupid child in the flow, you know; I didn't know any of these things. I didn't know it didn't matter what a person looked like, how much money they made or whether or not they were cool. I didn't know cool was just a myth and that one person was just a beautiful and meaningful as another." from Searching for God Knows What, by Donald Miller.

That's a challenge to me...even as I live the life of a missionary, in another culture and country...a reminder to keep loving the unlovable, no matter what they look like, or smell like, or what they might want from you. Do as Jesus did, and love them for how God sees them, not how the world sees them.

Spidey

Here is a picture of us in our Spiderman T-shirts...we also tried to take some coming up the escalator...but they were a bit blurry and didn't turn out so well. We did entertain the people sitting in the nearby restaurants as we went up and down the escalators multiple times. =) Thanks to Kim for taking the picture!

Records

On Wednesday, there was an event in the Philippines, to gather the most breastfeeding mothers, breastfeeding simultaneously in one place, and set a Guinness World Record....the unofficial count was that at least 3,608 mothers took part in it, in hundreds of locations all over the country. They beat a previous record set by mothers in Berkley, CA, in 2002.
Breastfeeding is quite an issue in a country where many mothers cannot afford to give their babies artificial milk, but many still do, because it is often linked to status. So many of the formula adds show fat western babies...and that is appealing to people here.
There are plenty of studies, and reasons that show breastfeeding is the best for babies, but so many people here are not aware of those studies, and only see the advertisements from the media.
According to the World Health Organization, children fed with infant formula are 25 times more likely to die of diarrhea than those who are breast-fed.
In 2003, WHO estimated that 16,000 children under the age of 5 died in the Philippines as a result of improper feeding practices, including infant formula.
Today, only 16 percent of Filipino children between 4 and 5 months old are exclusively breast-fed and 13 percent of mothers do not breast-feed at all, believing they do not have enough milk, according to UNICEF.

To read the full article, click here...
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view_article.php?article_id=63829


In other news...all of us girls went to go see Spiderman 3 on Wednesday...good times! They went all out, and we all had matching Spiderman T-shirts....maybe I'll be able to get a picture up in a couple of days...=) The theater was pretty much full, and it a great time.

Dentist

So....I went to the dentist about a week and a half ago...I hadn't been to see a dentist for, well, I was 18 the last time I went...and I'll be 25 in a month, so almost 7 years. I was a little nervous.
But! Everything went well...she cleaned my teeth, which hurt, but she said that I have no cavities. I was a bit shocked. Brushing, I do regularly, but my flossing habits are sadly hit and miss...so I was expecting a flood of cavity problems. Thankfully, there are none. =)