Consider It Pure Joy: "Be still..."

Good morning to all!

Start off with two verses of encouragement:

"The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” Exodus 14:14
"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!" Psalm 46:10
To be silent or to be still means to let go, make yourself weak. Meaning- trust God to direct you and be your strength, do not rely on yourself! I love being here and I love the people i am surrounded by, but I still struggle with feeling tired or worn out or like I need to be doing so much more or figuring out everyone's problems. But I do not, I need to be still and be silent and rely on Him and trust that He will guide me.

I have learned that the blessing with coming on a mission trip for a longer period of time is that I can do my mission by just living with the people. That means cooking, cleaning. shopping at the market, working out, playing, learning, worshipping, doing laundry, taking naps, walking in the roads can all be a part of my mission trip. And my goodness- I love it!

Mimay's house is coming along great! One of my favorite parts of building the house is going to market with ate Mayang and Mimay to buy the supplies. People in market always ask them where I am from and they now say "She's filipina!" And they ask, "Is this your friend?" and they said "No, this is my sister." :) Ah- it makes me smile! I have taken them to grab a snack while we are in town, so one day they told me they were going to buy me a snack! How cute!

Two guys named Michael and Sean invited me to go on a jog with them at 5am. I stupidly and pridefully said yes. Keep in mind, these are typical-super in shape and muscular filipinos. We ended up running for 2.5 hours!!!! They gave me a whole tour around Gingoog! It was really fun but man- I was so tired when we finally got back to Pandan.

Last night I stayed at the Nehemiah House in Gingoog because they were short staffed. I got to teach a Bible study on what the Bible says about beauty vs what the world tells us beauty is. It was a nice reminder for myself as well!

Then this morning I went to have breakfast with the Dagoldol family! Kuya Nick (the father) realized that two of his boats hadn't come in from the night before, so we jumped in a boat to find them. The fishermen were having such a good catch where they were that they had kept fishing! When we found them i got to watch how they fish with their nets! It was so awesome!!! Then I went back to breakfast with the Dagoldols. Guess what we had? Fish, more fish, then some more fish and of course- rice. :) It was so much fun!

Mass wedding is in two weeks! There are 11 couples getting married and we are estimating that 200 people come to the wedding. This means planning something big!! If you would like to sponsor a couple, we could really use some more sponsors- it's about $85-$100 (this includes the food, the dress, the guests for that couple, and the equipment). A job I took on is to make sure all the couple's have rings. I think I mentioned these rings in past blogs, but they are made from a 10 peso coin. They are beautiful rings!!! And hand made right here in Pandan!

Anyways- that is all for now! I will be back in the States in 2.5 weeks and I cannot wait to wear a sweatshirt and scarf and boots!!!