We’re now in our third year as missionaries in the Philippines. We just returned from Cebu, where we went to apply for new passports at the American consulate. Mine is only four pages from being full, bearing visa stamps from Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, and China, as well as six pages eaten up by coming in and out of the Philippines. Hosanna and Isaiah applied for new passports as well, since theirs are due to expire in 2015. So we will have new passports in about six weeks. Then we will hope that our agents in Manila can get all our missionary visa stamps transferred into them.
A year ago, we went to Cebu to vacation with Sora’s parents Mickey and Robin. This year, finding ourselves in the city again, we decided to turn a once-in-a-lifetime experience into a twice-in-a-lifetime experience: we went to nearby Oslob to swim with the whale sharks again. The seas were high with swelling waves, and the younger three kids mostly clung to the outriggers of the boat. But I was able to swim around, and the whale sharks came right up to us. There must have been six in five minutes. Sora got bumped by a tail. The water was a bit murky, and the whale sharks’ camouflage was all too effective. The result was that they frequently appeared out of nowhere, and I had to scoot to get out of the way.
Today is our first day back in Davao, and I returned to more ordinary life: reading Latin with my homeschooled students (a prose retelling of Aeneid I in Ørberg’s Lingua Latina: Roma Aeterna) resuming my classes at Faith Academy. On arriving on campus, I found that the new high school building, under construction since early last year, had at last been opened for use. I have a new classroom! And what a room it is: big, spacious, beautifully well lit with skylights, and a view of the SIL campus out the corner window.
It will be a joy to teach in this space for the coming year. We appreciate your prayers and support in 2015!
Receive with Meekness 