today is sunday.  my sweet friend connie, who is the secretary in the office at the baby home, invited me to go to church with her.

i walked down the hill to meet her, and while i was waiting these two fellows strolled by.

yep, i'm pretty sure he's carrying a rooster. lots of cock fighting here.

and off they went.

i didn't want to be too much of a tourist, but i wish i'd have taken a couple photos outside. this was a sweet little church of the brethren.  they were having their christmas party after the service today.

the service was mostly in tagalog, with one prayer, a song and some christmas caroles in english. here the youth sang 'mary did you know'. you see that several kids had the lyrics on their cell phones.

i joked with connie about this tree, because their are no ornaments on the top. she said, we philipinos are too short to reach and no one noticed, heh.

there were lot of games, simple fun joiners like musical chairs that everyone really enjoyed.  so much laughing as you can see. this was a game where some husbands were blindfolded and put bright lipstick and eyeshadow on their wives.

this is a poor photo, but i'll include it so that you can see connie.  she is a single mom with two sons. there was a gift exchange and connie brought along a present for me so that i would be included.  so nice!!  she is a very happy and fun and chatty lady.  she talks almost as much as i do, ha!

i took this girl's picture because i loved her shoes.

super cute, right???

attached to the church is their christian school.  this was the view from up top where the classrooms (okay, and the bathrooms) are located.  this was about a 5 minute trike ride from our corner, you see how close we are to manila bay.

the song books were bible study books with black paper on the outside and the pages replaced by photo copied song lyrics.  i completely love this fellow's bible you see here on the bench with the song books.

is this fabulous or what.

okay, i thought it might be fun to just throw in all the latest photos from my phone, so you can see how we roll.

emma and tracy are midwife students living at the apartment. emma is from australia and tracy returned this morning to atlanta.  which is why we walked down to chow king last night to get some halo halo as a goodbye treat. this is emma.

typical example of how things go here. tracy ordered a medium, emma a large.  waitress brings a tray with 1 large and 2 medium. gives the large to another table, gives us 2 medium and leaves. emma walks to the counter, reports the error, watches sadly as they toss her halo halo in the trash bin. waitress makes a large, just as she leaves the counter, it slides off the tray and on to the floor. waitress makes a third halo halo for emma, which is why tracy is nearly finished and emma has only begun.

per wiki: Halo-halo (Tagalog: [haˈlo-haˈlo], "mixed together") is a popular Filipino dessert with mixtures of shaved ice and evaporated milk to which are added various boiled sweet beans, jello and fruits. It is served in a tall glass or bowl.

Ingredients include boiled kidney beans, garbanzos, sugar palm fruit (kaong), coconut sport (macapuno), and plantains caramelized in sugar, jackfruit (langkâ), gulaman, tapioca, nata de coco, sweet potato (kamote), cheese, pounded crushed young rice (pinipig). In terms of arrangement, most of the ingredients (fruits, beans, and other sweets) are first placed inside the tall glass, followed by the shaved ice. This is then sprinkled with sugar, and topped with either (or a combination of) leche flan, purple yam (ubeng pula), or ice cream. Evaporated milk is poured into the mixture upon serving.

which is why i didn't have one.  :o)

this is a pic of my bedroom door, decorated with a card and bow from a BEAUTIFUL treat i received in the mail from colin's mom, kathy cojeen.  she sent me a big container of oreos that she hand dipped in chocolate and decorated and then wrapped up in lovely little packages. we all hung the bows on our doors after.  i have enjoyed sharing some and enjoyed eating many.  YUM!

this was at the goodbye despedita for chris, who went home with her adoptive parents to live in spain. when we gather, i always love seeing the pile of shoes outside the playroom gate and i have a pile of photos to prove it.

these are a couple of pics i took of baby nicole. our babies wear cloth diapers and tracy brought some awesome new diaper covers that a friend donated to the nursery.  i saw nicole sleeping in her crib wearing one and looking all adorable, so i took these to send as a thank you.

when i came here, she was 4 days old and she just turned 4 months old.  wows.

i was sitting up in the laundry lines at the birth home soaking up some sunshine and i took this pic just because i though it was so pretty.

i took this at the department store, just because i thought it was hilarious.

i took this out the window of a car that would not stop even though the sunset was gorgeous and i was yelling in my head, where is dee when i need her cause she would have stopped in the middle of the road with me to take picures even if it was manila!!

these were not on my phone, but i wanted to tell you about this little fellow, isiah. he came to the little children's home when he was one month old.  he weighed 2.95K at birth and 2.9K a month later.

this is him with katherine when he first came to us.

i took him home with me for a few days and held him all the time, and woke him to eat and just spent lots of time with him. all the caregivers worked hard with him and we were all super happy when he weighed in at 4K 2 weeks later.  he started at about 6.5# and gained more than 2# in less than 2 weeks.  this was from the photo booth at the kids christmas party.  i want to thank everyone who prayed for him to do well, he is a sweet and quiet little fellow, and he is doing great.

i'm not sure what happened in the pic, but i'll assure you that my teeth have not turned orange . . . ?

i'll gather some more pics from the christmas party and get those up next.  i know that you look for a blog post on sunday, laurie jensen, so you'll find it no coincidence that i've posted these past two sundays. love you, my friend!  thanks everyone for checking in, and for all of your sweet encouragement.

merry christmas to you all, i hope you can spend it enjoying the company of the people you love most.  i'll be missing my girls, for sure.  especially this one.

xoxo  jo