Little Things

We are still on our month of rest and transition, so we still haven't gotten fully into our roles.  As of now, we are still living in the ministry center because the townhouse we are to move into is being a bit remodeled.  The kitchen in the townhouse was very small.  However, built into just about every semi-modern Filipino house is a small room where a maid (called a helper here) would live.  The helper's room in our townhouse is right off the kitchen.  We don't plan on having a live-in helper, so we had them knock out the dividing wall between the kitchen and the helper's room.  Now our kitchen will be almost twice as big and will actually be big enough to have a refrigerator in (it wasn't before!).

More on helpers:  It's very common around here to have a helper come work for you for anywhere between an hour and the whole day.  Before coming, as we went over a budget for Jess and I with Jeff, he mentioned us getting a helper.  As an American thinking about being a full time missionary, the thought was completely out of the question.  After all, it's demeaning right?  Well, it was explained to us as this: some people make their sole source of living by being helpers.  In fact, around here, it's almost looked down upon for a foreign missionary to NOT have a helper.  It provides a job for someone to feed their family, and the wife of the house (Jess in this case) will be able to free herself up for a couple hours to tend to other things like tutoring or working with kids.  So, with that in mind, we've decided to have a helper for a couple hours maybe three days a week.  We'll report on how that is later.

For now, we're just taking care of little things like visas.  The process of getting a visa here is a bit of a pain.  We have to send our birth certificates, marriage license, college degrees, etc. to the Philippine consulate in New York City for them to be authenticated.  Then we pay a lot of money to get a visa that might be one or two years, depending on how nice they are feeling that day.  Let's hope and pray that ours are approved for 2 years, saving us the cost and time of applying again soon.

Also, we got a car!  God provided us with a 2004 Toyota Revo.  It's great because it seats 12 people, it's a car that will last us a long time, and our all around handyman, Benjie, is especially skilled at fixing Revos.  Within Kids Internatinal Ministries staff, we own 5 Revos, so he's getting quite good at repairs.  I'll attach a picture of our Revo below.  Until next time, God bless!