Tribal Visit

Since updates on language study are pretty boring most of the time we are happy that we have some exciting stuff to share. Taking the opportunity to visit a missionary team in the north of Luzon is part of our training. This last month, We spent time with two missionary families during the 12 days we were there. It was a great time talking with missionaries that are one step ahead of us in becoming a church planter in remote areas. The more experienced missionaries there are also a part of our Leadership. We enjoyed connecting with them and getting as much wisdom as we could from them. 

Here are a few pictures from our experience 

Even the kids are tougher than Alex...

Gabino came to help clear a spot for the missionaries new orchard

Roasted bananas anyone?

My first taste of sugar cane. It was WAY sweeter than I expected!

Break time

We saw the biggest fern hiking back home that afternoon.

We can understand two verses at least:)

This Bible is in the trade language of the area but right now the missionaries are working on a new translation in the people's heart language that will greatly help understanding.

This kid is a quick study.

Erin and I were able to help out with a few small tasks for the missionaries. The missionary and I replaced the top of the clinic roof.

Erin teaching the kinder class a song about a worm becoming a butterfly 

The kids with their 'worms'

The Missionary did a little lesson about how caterpillars became butterflies, I guess I was more interesting:)

One last trip to plant some more of the trees for their orchard

We're so blessed to live here!

This trip was a great time to get away from language study for a bit and a chance to look toward our future ministry, wherever that may be. We had planned on staying for 1 week but because of an emergency down south the helicopter couldn't come and get us! We stayed an extra five days in the village. It was a great lesson about what to expect while living remotely. Simply, expect the unexpected. We had to rely on the missionaries a lot, which was another learning experience. 

By the end of it all we were ready to head to our own home and get back into language study. The bugs were driving us crazy! We had over 1000 bites from gnats between the two of us - yes Erin counted... 

Life At Home

We're just two weeks shy of being in the Philippines for ONE YEAR. Here's what we do every day and a few things that are different in our home compared to a home in the States.

Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday our language helper Erica comes to our house for 2 hours of language study. During this time we chat, learn new words, have her tell us stories, and practice some of our weak language skills with her. We met her through a mutual friend and are now attending the same church. It's been great getting to know her. She's a great language helper and a really fun person.

Practicing some old words that we should know but have forgotten, using TPR.
(TPR is basically hearing the word and pointing at the picture or object)

One of the more fun things to do while learning language is learning the steps to a new activity and the language associated with it. Last week we made Pastillas, a sweet milk candy.

Every day from 1 to 3 we have our language tutor Wendel. Another awesome language helper who has been working with New Tribes Missionaries for 9 years.

Our bedroom is extremely long and doubles as our office during the heat of the day. The house commonly gets over 100 degrees inside so we enjoy the air conditioning during the afternoon language sessions.  

Now a few things different in our home than a home in the States

Our twin tub washing machine. After a wash and a rinse in the
left side, the right side spins the water out and Erin hangs them
up to dry. 

Our electric water heater for warm showers.

There's nothing different about this power strip
compared to the states but we use them on everything!
There is a much better chance of having your stuff
fried here. 

Our Automatic Voltage Regulator protects our fridge and
important kitchen appliances from fluctuations in current.

We've put in over one thousand hours of language study in. The time consists of the class time mentioned about, language and culture exposure outside, listening to recordings from class, and a bit of reading. 

Thank you all for praying for us and supporting us so that we can keep all of our focus and learning Tagalog. 

Continue to Pray:

- For our relationships with those around us. 

- That we would take opportunities to love and not focus only on language study.

- For direction for our future. We'll soon begin the process of looking for our future ministry location. 

Definitely!

The complete set of Phase 1 beads!

New make-over and a new color!
The orange beads represent Phase 2.

Our HTR Language Jar got a little make over AND a new bead color was added! That means we are now in phase 2 of our language journey in Tagalog. Phase 2 is just a fancy way of saying that we are learning new techniques for how to acquire language, and we are advancing in our ability to speak.







Even though the jar is slowly filling up we still have a looooong way to go! Here is a good story to demonstrate. Our little friend John stays over for lunch sometimes. When we are finished eating it's time for our language session so John gets ready to go home. As he is leaving he usually asks, "Papasok ba ako a las tres?"("Can I come back at 3?") In the best Tagalog we can muster we respond with a smile, "Puede, ingat po.' ("Maybe, be careful as you go.") We never really know how we'll feel after language or if we'll be busy with something else.

There is only one problem with this interaction. When we said "maybe," we used puede. Not knowing that when using puede in a response to question it actually means yes or sure.  So, for three months when John asked to come over we told him yes and thought we had told him maybe. 

You can imagine his disappointment and confusion when he came back and we said sorry not this afternoon. Eventually he did catch on and realized that we didn't understand what we were saying. Just a couple of weeks ago we learned the actual word for maybe - baka, (which means something similiar to a 50/50 chance. Not to be confused with baka, which means cow). The next time we saw him this was our conversation.

After chatting for a bit...

John: "Can I come over tomorrow?"

Me: "Maybe (baka instead of pwede).

John: "Good one!"

When he responded like that, I knew he understood what we were trying to say for 3 Months...

Thank goodness for a little grace from a 10 year old.

Speaking of that 10 year old, here he is with Alex at a little swimming hole that's not to far from our house. These pics are from a day that we spent out at a local believer's house. They invited all the kids to come out and swim because it was ridiculously hot :)

For those of you who are curious...

1. What has it been like to live in the Philippines for six months?

• We often feel as if it's the first day in a new high school. We don't know where things are, who to ask, what to expect, or who we can trust. Plus everyone at this new school speaks Tagalog. There is a huge language barrier where even if they speak English communication is difficult or doesn't happen. We are beginning to feel more comfortable now that we know some people in town and in our neighborhood.

     2. Do you feel safe?

• Yes! We feel very safe where we live and when we travel around. 

     3. What can you say in Tagalog?

• We can comfortably greet people, buy things at the market, ask if they have certain items at the market, introduce ourselves, get to know someone a bit with questions like how many kids do you have, compare and contrast things based on their appearance, and understand much more but can't quite produce it yet. 

     4. What is your favorite thing about living there?

• Alex: My favorite thing is how kind and generous everyone is. At the same time, because we only understand a little of the culture and language, I am often really cautious when someone we just met is being overly generous. I always feel like there is an ulterior motive so far we haven't found that to be the case.
• Erin: For me, all the fun culture things are really enjoyable to learn. Like how family units celebrate holidays and take care of each other. The slower pace of life is like a double edged sword... it's so nice not to have be in a hurry all the time, but it's a real pain when you show up an hour early to things.

     5. What is your least favorite thing about living there?

• Alex: The HEAT! It has been really hot the last 3 months and it looks like it will stay that way for a bit longer. It has been in the low 90's every day but the heat index is often over 100. It makes you feel like not doing anything outside...
• Erin: Probably the way people drive around here. You have to be really aggressive to get where you're going. It has it's perks because there aren't as many rules if you really need to get somewhere fast, but it's just a little scary sometimes :)

Another thing about Pinoy culture that we love...

Alex asked, "What are you doing?"

Our friend responded very matter-of-factly, "I'm watering him."

Turns out it's just as important to water your Carabao as it is to water your garden.

     Prayer requests:

• We have several sets of visitors and mini-conference coming up in July. It's going to be crazy busy. Pray that everyone will have safe travels and a good time of fellowship.

• Language is moving along at what sometimes feels like a painfully slow pace, but in reality we are still learning a ton, very quickly. We still sound like two year olds, but hey... you gotta start somewhere ;)

      Praise: 

• We think we found a church that we will be attending regularly! Praise God! Pray that we can make some great connections there.

               

Beautiful Japanese?! Oops...

"Magandang hapon!", we said with a smile. Our language helper then preceded to laugh at us. "What's so funny?" we asked. "You just told me 'Beautiful Japanese'." 

Magandang hapon or was it Magandang hapon... wait they're both spelled the same! One means "Good afternoon" and the other means "Beautiful Japanese". It all depends on where you put the stress. Hapon is afternoon; while Hapon is Japanese. The joys of learning language.

One month in and these beads are multiplying like rabbits! Our first three weeks of language study we were required to put in 20 hours a week. This worked out nicely in the beginning as a warm up, and we were able to finish setting up our house. Now we are in full time study with a requirement of 40 hours a week. 

  These beads represent the completion of                              Now, to date, we are chipping away at Phase 1B,

     of Phase 1A a couple of weeks ago.                          and if you look closely you can see our first 100th hour bead!

I wish you could be here to experience what these beads really represent. It's not just a cold, boring number. These beads are hours spent working with our language helper, discovering how bad our accent is ;), listening to recordings, bonding with Filipinos, diving head long into culture, reading up on Pinoy history, and being a part of our study group.

Look what we found! Alex has a jeepney named after him :D

We have been busy adjusting to our new 40 hour schedule, plus some visits from our church planting consultants and a couple of friends will be visiting next weekend. We feel like we're keeping a healthy pace. Below is a picture of Alex building Mack's dog house... the pic of Mack is a little old, and by old I mean maybe a week and a half. He is growing so fast, I'm pretty sure he's going to be a monster.

Alex and I were able to have some of our missionary friends from NTM Philippines over for dinner. We had such a good time making adobo (Bottom left picture) and playing pass the pigs.

We've also been spending lots of time with our little neighborhood buddy. (Bottom Right)

           

So it begins....Tagalog.

Well, it's official. We've had our first week of language study, and we absolutely loved it! It's so nice to start to understand basic Tagalog. To help you all "see" how our study is progressing I made this little visual aid.

One of the happy moments of my day is when I get to put our new beads in the jar ;)

Every bead that goes into this jar represents one hour of language study, and the large white beads represent every hundredth hour of study. There are four phases (potentially five, but I'll write about that in a later post) in our Tagalog study that will take one and half years to complete. Each phase will be represented by a different color so you can see us progress into harder and harder phases of study. Each subsequent phase is longer and harder than the one before. We will be putting in at least 40 hours each week.

We started phase 1 on Monday. Our first few days we did excursions, which are times when we go out with our entire study group to different locations around the city. Places like the post office, hospital, town hall, grocery store, market, etc... While we're out we take chronological pictures of events. These "events" can be simple, like getting on the bus or buying groceries. They can also be more complex, like going to a wedding or a birthday party. We'll use these pictures in later phases to help us learn more aspects of culture and language.

We ended our week with our first real language session with our language helper. We felt really good about this warm up session, and are so pumped to get into this. We used a technique called TPR. Total Physical Response is when you use pictures and movement to help you learn all sorts of nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc... Our language helper puts out a set of pictures and starts by telling us what is in the picture in Tagalog. First, he set out a group of photos of us. From those photos we learned the words for people and different pronouns. Then we learned the names of 12 different animals. That session was 2 hours long and we were introduced to 28 new words! Meeting in a large group takes longer to get things done so we will learn even faster when we meet as couples. For anyone who has tried to learn a second language you know that 28 words in the first two hours is pretty exciting. Especially when those words actually stick with you the next day :)

We also got to check out a new church last Sunday where some of our fellow Filipino missionaries attend. It was a really great time to connect with them and fellowship.

Oh! I almost forgot! Meet the newest member of our family :) This is Mack, he's a St. Weiler so he's gonna be a big boy... like over 100 lbs big. He's pretty sweet so we really like him.

Rollin' down the river

There's something so relaxing for me about watching leaves float down a little creek. I love how they drift along on top of the glassy surface without a care in the world. Then they bobble down the miniature rapids and pop back up to the surface. Only to get caught in a pool where they swirl around in circles for a bit, and come out the other side just being carried along wherever the current takes them. You may be wondering why I'm talking about a leaf... Well, I brought it up because it perfectly describes our last few weeks.

A pretty little creek out by Opal Lake in Oregon

For instance, a glassy surface we floated on was in early January. We attended our Field Conference, which was so refreshing. We had the privilege of meeting our co-workers working in all parts of the Philippines. There are missionaries from countries all over the world serving with NTM: places like Germany, Northern Ireland, Australia, Faeroe Islands, Canada, South Africa, and many more. We had such a good time getting to know them and hearing about all the different works they are in.

We were swirling around in circles while staying here in Manila for three weeks gathering supplies for our house. That doesn't seem like a very difficult task, but you would be amazed at how your head starts spinning while making decisions in the middle of a ginormous mall with people on every side of you. Praise God, we still have our sanity :)

We bobbled down the miniature rapids while looking for housing out in Bataan. We made several trips out of Manila, which is no easy task... only to arrive in Bataan to find that the owners of the homes we want to rent aren't available at that time. Then the bright side would pop up and we would get into a house that we weren't even looking at originally. Life is different here. It moves SOOO much more slowly than it does back home, and we are SOOO American! God's teaching us to slow down and wait for Him. We made our way to Subic Bay a couple of times to check out appliances and be overwhelmed with even more decisions. It's a blessing though that the appliances we were hoping for are actually available out there. (Note: We didn't careen over any waterfalls by the grace of God and much prayer from you all back home.)

Now we are floating along at a rather rapid pace as we move out to Bataan on Thursday. We will finish packing and buying last minute things today. We may even get to start language study next week! Woohooooo!

This creek is our life right now, but God is the current moving these little leaves to every part of life he wants us to go through.

Thanks for your prayer, it's working!!!

P.S. I don't have pics of the house yet, but I will hopefully get them up before the weekend.