Tropical Christmas!

Hey everyone. Sorry I've been neglecting the blog again. In one sense, time moves so slowly here (like when it takes forever and a day to do something simple like buy a hairdryer) and in another sense, it moves so fast (I can't believe we've already been here for five and a half months!).

People ask us how Christmas is different here. For one, it's a lot busier than we're used to. Filipinos love parties and they love to party late into the night. Christine wonders when or if people around here ever sleep, since we're kept up by illegal fireworks until 1AM or 2AM around this time. We plan to get out of the city and head to a retreat place in the province on Saturday to enjoy some quiet and natural beauty. Filipinos also love party games. And they love to dress up. We went to a couple of parties that had "Bohemian" themes. They call it "BoHo." I guess the Mary Kate and Ashley look is really in over here.

Here are some pics from the day our roles were reversed and Christine was the main speaker!


This themed party was "JC's Kingdom Ball" at church

Christine got to share the Christmas message at a children's event at church, complete with flannel-graph! They all dressed up and had this "kingdom" themed party in a room that was decorated like something out of the middle east. It was pretty cool. I preached on Christmas day and we had record attendance! I also led a worship set with the teens from our Friday night ministry that day. It went really well. That night, I played Caedmon's Call's rendition of "It came upon a Midnight Clear" on my jumbo acoustic at a big party with all my dad's relatives. That was a hectic day.


Flannel graph lives! Christine takes center stage with the Christmas story

Yesterday was better. More clam. My brother, Mark, Flew in from NY yesterday, so it's nice to see him again. He'll be finishing up at King's College in a year. I also got to see a couple of my aunts who flew in at the last minute because one of my uncle's parents here is in critical condition. These relatives (who came in from Maryland) had a tropical Christmas of their own planned---but in Florida!

Let's see...what else... Oh, I got some more "Tales of Weird" for ya...but I'll save that for another blog. "Maligayang Pasko!"