Work and play

What's our day in/day out look like here? Ben is off to work in the morning, often coming back for lunch like this:

Yes, ladies and gentleman, let us tempt you with the delightful tropics, so humid you can slurp the moisture from the air. And, yes, his shirt is soaked from perspiration. I believe his work on this day included working on the airplane at the hangar...This was taken only a short while into the day.

And on the homefront, while daddy toils away in the humid heat, we think of ways to include both entertainment and education (ok, so the education part only happens when I'm involved...). On this particular day, we let it 'snow' in the house, brought by a large amount of old printer paper that the kids found and pulled out. It's the coolest stuff to them. Instead of just one peice of paper, it just kept coming and coming, all attached to the next piece. Maybe the fascination is something akin to the kleenex box for these youngsters. Ah, but I digress...

So, we had snow, able to have snowball fights, make snow angels, and sing snow songs:

And after all that really fun mess, we eat. Sometimes, we even finish the meal:


And at the end of the day, when all is *hopefully* put away, daddy is back from work, tummies are full, and showers are taken, we all sit down to stories before bedtime.



And then...

good night.

October ish

I feel Octoberish today. I don't really know what that means, but I feel it nonetheless.

Many have asked how our friends have been affected up in Manila by all the flooding. Well...

Two of our national coworkers lost everything. One sat on her roof with about 100 neighbors, since her house was the only one left standing. The other sat on her roof (before being rescued) for hours with her children, at one point saying her goodbyes because she thought the end was near.

A couple of our other coworkers had their houses flooded, one's car was underwater, and one family was stuck on their second floor for 2 days because it flooded 7 feet on their 1st floor.

Clean up has begun. It would be a nice thought to think the water came and left. But, Manila is full of dirt and grease and all of that came with the flood water, coating everything it touched. So, besides those who lost everything, those who did not have quite the clean up...

And here on Palawan, we didn't see much of Ketsana. We had some cooler days with clouds.

And it looks like this last typhoon, Pepeng, missed Manila, although it directly hit some of our other missionary locations in northern Luzon.

I've been watching the satellite for over a year now, keeping tabs on weather conditions and what's coming for flight days that Ben has. We'll see what this next storm does, but it looks like it's going to head north, as well.