american driving 

donner lake 

jojo and mcqueen 

jojo 

christine, her mom and jojo 

me 

Manila Driving (Missionary Rant)

Just another day on Ortigas Avenue in Pasig City

Some people seem to think it's a "patience-builder." Others feel like it's "death by stress." Unfortunately, my experience over the last year has me siding with the latter. Take a look at this picture, friends. You can barely see the solid white line in the middle of the shot. Everything to the left side is supposed to be oncoming traffic. Notice how vehicles have formed their own lane in opposing traffic? That's TOTALLY normal here. No one bats an eye.

The vehicles to the right (with their brake lights on) are stopped because those in the make-shift lane are forcefully merging in. Why? They've finally run into opposing traffice and have to merge. I MISS THE USA! Oh, the open roads of California. Driving down the 5 from Fresno at 75mph...Oh the simple pleasure of driving..

This city is so congested, it's crazy---especially out where we live. It can take me between 30 minutes to an hour to drive 3 miles down the street to Messiah College. At night, it's even worse.

Forgive the rant, but it just took some stress off of my chest to share that with you, our blog-reading buddies! :-)

Family Days

Jojo's Play Class
At the beginning of July, we enrolled Jojo in Gymboree's Level 5 play group. He really loves it! Many parents agree that it's one of the few safe, clean and age-appropriate places to take toddlers around here. He has a nice teacher named Christine (nice name!). So these have become our Saturdays. It's something we can do together as a family and it's really helped our adjustment here. This activity is called "tip and fall." Basically, the kid rides on the airlog and then falls off into your arms.


Jojo riding the air log at Gymboree

Jojo's Crafts
He's such a toddler now and that means he can't stop moving for even a second. He likes to watch a lot of TV, but we want to try and curb that. He loves to get out into the village on his little three-wheeler bike, but it's the rainy season now and it rains constantly. So we occupy him at home with crafts and stuff. Here's something I made him out of a box of oatmeal: It's box-head boy!


For some reason box-head boy makes a roaring sound

Christine also bakes cookies with him and such. one day they made playdough out of peanut butter and then made peanut butter cookies afterwards. I took a break from my lesson prep to sample the goodies! Since most of my teaching ministry takes place either in the afternoons or at night after work hours, I try to spend time a little bit of time with him in the day. He also likes cars and dinosaurs now.

The adjustment is still ongoing, but we're no longer surprised at the horrible state of driving (Yes, I've been here a year and I still hate every second of it! The chaos continues to build!), lack of daycare at churches, and other cultural frustrations. Veteran missionaries say it stops being "Culture Shock" and more "Culture Fatigue" that gets to you after a while. Oh well, that is Manila living. No wonder most missionaries live out in the province. :-)

Messiah College Begins!

The School Year Begins!
Despite a number of setbacks, Messiah College opened in late June with just eight freshmen. One reason this happened was that even though the government approved our programs two months or so before opening day, they did not deliver the physical permits to Messiah College until two weeks before the first day of classes. It's illegal to promote the school without these permits in hand. So they only had a couple of weeks to recruit students.

Here I am at the first day of studnet orientation. This is just before I got up to speak, introduce myself and tell them about the classes I'll be teaching: Seminar in Worldview Analysis and Development and Biblical Doctrines.


Mikel at Student Orientation

One cool thing is that these eight kids got together for a leadership retreat before school began and really got to bond. They also did some street evangelism and such togehter. We just finished the Worldview Seminar and a few of them did well. Many of them really need to work on their English writing skills. Also, critical-thinking is a challenge for most Filipino students, since primary and secondary curriculums stress rote memorization here. Interestingly, teaching college here is like teaching high school in the US. Why? Most of these kids are 16, 17, and 18ish. That's really the age they begin college here.


Messiah College freshmen

Another cool thing is how God's already used Christine and I to help people identify error and stay away from false prophets and cults. The students' really had their eyes opened when we talked about Mormonism and the errors of Benny Hinn's theology, in the context of a discussion on polytheism. Also, it seems many well-meaning Filipinos have been duped by the theological errors of the Word Faith Movement. This is not just academics. Bad theology results in bad practice. And often times, people get hurt emotionally and spiritually by listening to false doctrine.

Typhoon in Tagaytay

So after two months of hectic ministry stuff, we decided to take an overnight vacation to Tagaytay. I guess Christine thought we’d get some rain, but she had no idea it would turn into a major tropical storm. Well, the family experienced our first typhoon together; looking out the window at trees bending and caving to the power of the driving rain and whistling, howling winds.


Jojo looks out at the bending trees and driving rain

So the overnight stay turned into a two-night stay because we were stranded at the hotel. I wasn’t about to risk driving us home in near-zero visibility and flying debris all around. The place we were staying at actually had part of it’s roof fly off! Our room stayed dry, though. The power went out for half the day, but the typhoon kept us cool.


A hotel window is ripped open by howling winds of typhoon Caloy

Too bad the restaurant and part of the lobby got ripped up by the storm. This was a good, clean, economical place to stay. You can see a picture of that here. Christine said that since it was so hot for so long, she’d been praying for rain. I told her she might have prayed a little too hard! :-)

Last Two Months

Hey friends. I'm sorry the blog's been neglected for over two months. A lot's happened and I've been super-swamped with work. Much of this was good, though. Let me give you a brief run-down of some things that will show up in our next newsletter (by the end of the week), and some that won't (a blog exculsive!):

March 10 -14: Cebu
The family headed out to Cebu city (about an hour away by plane) to meet with our missionary collegues. In between meetings, the families got to know each other over some sports and swimming at a beautiful place on the island of Mactan. Very nice. Jojo absolutely loved it and he's now swimming "on his own" with the use of "water wings" or floaters. I came back with a huge assignment which required meetings with denominational leaders to flesh out theological and cultural views on church discipline and restoration in the local context. Not "fun" per se, but very eye opening. This information will benefit the BGC. Maybe I'll publish some kind of resource to help the churches after I expand the study some more.


Jojo spots some little fish on a Mactan island beach

March 18: Jojo's Birthday Party!
His birthday's actually on the 19th, but we did it on a Saturday to get his cousins involved. Again, it was mostly swimming--this kid really loves water. Can you blame him? It's often 98-100 degrees out here plus the humidity!


Jojo's two years old! Doesn't he look like a big boy?

March 20: CHED visits Messiah College
I was grilled for about an hour regarding our Intercultural Studies program. "What is this class?" "How many journals does your library hold?" "Why do you have a concentration in missions?" etc.. etc.. At the end of the day, God allowed all five undergraduate programs to pass the inspection. We should have received the physical permits to open the school that week. But it took almost two months. In fact, we only got those permits TODAY (and only because God allowed an order to come from the capital building). But praise the Lord; we have our permits! Messiah will begin undergraduate programs next month!

April 16: I Preached the Easter Message at 5:30AM!
I was asked to do this at the church sunrise service. About 150 plus people were there. It really went well and some even remembered what I talked about (they said so and some even recited my main points after the service). Basically, it was on the historicity of the Resurrection and it's relevance to both Christians and non-Christians today. We even had a couple families come in as first-time visitors.

April 20: Teaching Begins
I started teaching my first class at Messiah School of Professional Studies. It's called "Worldviews in Conflict," after the book by Ronald Nash. 2o people showed up for the first session and the class is going strong. We're going for ten weeks, contrasting the Christian worldview with other views like atheism, polytheism, pantheism, etc.. etc.. to help Christian teachers and pastors analyze their own views and lead others in to the truth. I even spent time training professionals heading to Japan, Thailand and China to teach English and share the gospel. Exciting times!


Me teaching Intelligent Design in the science lab

May 7: Back to Cebu and onto Bohol
This time, I flew to Cebu alone and presented my findings for the project on discipline and restoration. This might be an area God's leading me into: Helping hurting churches restore leaders to fellowship and perhaps even to service. We'll see. After that, I took a boat to another island called Bohol to meet with Filipino church leaders at a conference. I really missed Christine and Jojo on this trip. :-(

May 12-14: Family Vacation in Tagaytay
After two months of intense work, we decided to take an overnight family trip to Tagaytay again. Only this time, Christine and Jojo experienced their very first typhoon... this deserves it's own post: "Typhoon in Tagaytay."

Back to "Normal"

Well, it's been a few days since the president lifted the National State of Emergency and things are getting back to normal. As of this writing, I have successfully driven past a number of military camps on the way to church without seeing much out of the ordinary (for Manila!). According to the government, the immediate threat to the current administration has been contained. Life goes on...

Now we're back to the "normal" inconveniences of life here:

1. People ring your doorbell 4 times in a span of 8 seconds just to make sure to are hurrying yourself over to answer the door.

2. Furniture you buy at the store to be delivered may be damaged in transit and need to be repaired (no warranties or help from the store of course).

3. Oh, and driving here brings new meaning to the term "bumper to bumper." i.e. your bumpers DO touch each other on occasion and if there is space, a two lane steet can become four. Perhaps I'm just bitter because a taxi hit my van the other day. Grrrrr.... Of course he just left. He's probably already in trouble with the company that owns the taxi. Very minor damage to by bumper. His partially came off.

That's Manila living for ya. I guess there is a lesson in all this: when there is a huge crisis, you're focused on your personal safety and stuff. After that has past, it's the little things in life that become the biggest deals in the world to you (like how many times someone rings your doorbell). The problem of evil will be with us until Jesus takes over this place, BUT it's interesting to note that we can always find something to point to complain about. So we pray for much grace to endure the day-to-day struggles. And yes, we do a lot of praying here...

On the Scene of a Rally

Fort Bonifacio Standoff: Image from inq7.net

"Don't got to any rallies. You could be arrested." These were some of the first words spoken to me by a leader of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches upon our arrival in July. This was when it was just startingto come out that the president may have been involved in election fraud.

Well, me, I'm not thinking of getting arrested. I'm thinking of keeping my family out of harms way as best I can (Yes, I know we moved to this country voluntarily, but that's another issue!). Anway, could you really see me and Christine and Jojo in an angry crowd holding up signs to overthrow the government?

But seriously, today, we drove right by a gathering demonsration on our way back from church...and saw the escalation on TV when we got home! We have to drive by a number of miliatry camps to get home and all I saw were a bunch of onlookers and huge military vehicles in the street. Oh well. Luckily, we got through that area before the real action began.

Long story short, a huge group of protestors and even some politicians were arngy that a certain marine commanant was relieved from duty on suscpicion of being involved in a plot to oust the Philippine president on Thursday night. This really wasn't that big of a deal, but I'm just letting you guys know that this stuff is going down right in our very midst. It hits close to home when you see the news "live on the scene" before you see it on TV!

I hope people still read our blog. I know I haven't updated it as often as I should and maybe it's old hat to a number of our supporters already. But please keep praying for our safety. Thanks.

Here's some info on what we passed by from a local english-language newspaper: Marines holed up inside camp agree to stand down

State of Emergency

Good thing we decided to call my dad this morning to see if he needed a ride into Ortigas Center. We were almost heading out the door when he told us to turn on the news (our TV is usualy set to Blues Clues or Jojo's other Nick Jr. shows!). Schools and businesses were closed and it was beginning to get messy downtown.


Troops on Double Red-Alert: Picture from CNN.com

Apparently, the government foiled a coup attempt last night and fears more civil unrest may develop from rallies planned this weekend. The capital building went on double red-alert and the president declared a National State of Emergency around 11AM. Basically, all rallies are now illegal and there is rioting in the streets about 25 minutes away from our house (about 3 miles away). If you've seen the CNN footage of protesters being hosed down by a water cannon (in front of a shrine to the Virgin Mary), that is literally across the street from Messiah College!

Some are contesting the president's declaration of a State of Emergency because it never went to congress. Under this, the government has the power to take over private businesses and utilities, arrest people without warrants, etc.. etc... The government says "everything is under control" but the level of security at the palace and the rioting in the streets make you wonder.

Suffice it to say, we didn't leave our village today. Pray the civil unrest settles down soon. We are all, OK though.

Here's the lastest from CNN as of right now.

Trip to Tagaytay

This weekend, I took the family out to see a truly remarkable island volcano called "Taal" in Tagaytay. I actually camped on there for a couple of days when I was in 7th grade. What makes it so cool is that it's an island volcano located within an island nation (the Philippines), AND inside the volcano crater is ANOTHER island--I've been there, too! Yes, it's an active volcano, but we didn't set foot on it as a family. Maybe when Jojo's older. :-) Here's a shot of the view we had (sorry, it was a bit foggy when I took this picture):


Taal's an island volcano, within the Philippine islands, that has an island inside its crater

Mostly it was a trip to get away once again. I really thanked God for this. It's no understatement to say ministering (and just living for that matter) in Metro Manila is a stressful job. I find that we need these kind of things after a few months of living in the city. Every now and then we need to hit the "reset button."

Tagaytay reminds us of the beauty of the Philippines and that we actually live on an island! And the air. Ahh, the air. I never thought I liked breathing clean air so much. I actually used to loathe camping trips back in the US (saying I loved the city, and as long as I had broadband and malls I would be OK). Now, I think I'm becoming a bit of a nature freak. Christine LOVES nature, and Jojo loves it too! He was running around and really having a blast. I think we shall be back in a few months.


Jojo and Mama having fun on the grass

On the "church" side of things, I was really excited to meet a seeker who had only been to an evangelical church twice in her life the other Sunday. We talked for a bit and then I invtied her to youth group. I prayed for her every night and guess what? She came! She even connected with one of our student leaders and wanted to meet for accountability with her once a week! Now I'm praying she would come to know the Lord. She seems really interested and always has an excited smile on her face. Her name is Dannie.

Well, we're back in town now and it's back to work for me. We have our langauge teacher again in the morning and I've got to get a couple syllabi finalized and submitted for the inspection of the government, too: Philosophy and Apologetics (for Messiah Colllege).