Back from Faith Academy Orientation

by Seth

Caliraya Retreat Center

We spent the last week getting our New Staff Orientation at Faith Academy, as well as our all-staff orientation at the Staff Retreat by a lake a couple hours away from Manila, up in the mountains. It has been very good to meet with administrators, meet other new teachers and their families, and to meet staff members who have been at Faith for many years.

We have also met some teachers who live in the same neighborhood as we do, and who are willing to offer us rides to school, at least sometimes. This, combined with the availability of the school vans should be sufficient to take care of our transportation needs for getting to and from school. And the public transportation options are so numerous (and readily available) that we may not need any sort of vehicle at all, at least not for this first year. We may still purchase a scooter if we decide it would be good to have around, but otherwise we do not see a need to have our own vehicle right now.

We also now have a much clearer picture of our classes, our class schedules, some of the students we can expect to see in class (starting on Thursday), and the size of our classes. As a somewhat amusing side note, I will likely have mostly fairly small class sizes for my Physics classes, probably partly because the students do not recognize my name (but also because the school made some changes to the Physics classes being offered this year, compared to last year). In any case, I'm kind of looking forward to having fairly small classes, allowing me the opportunity to really build into the lives of those students.

Well, it's about time for bed right now. We are heading to the mall tomorrow after church to buy some Filipino cell phones (a very important thing for communication around here). Let's hope our shopping goes well!

Time...

from Laura

So during the past two weeks in New York, I experienced one of those strange moments in life when time slows down.  Life has been extraordinarily full recently, and much of June flew by.  Going up to Houghton, though, slowed us down.  We had plenty to do and learn, and spent a number of hours every day in sessions getting our heads and hearts stuffed.  But there was also a lot of time around the edges, and that was where life stretched out. There was plenty of time to sit with new friends and talk over dinner about the stories of God's work in our lives, taking us overseas. There was time to play euchre or ultimate frisbee, or to watch pieces of World Cup games. There was time to make phone calls and really talk with people back home, without feeling rushed. There was time to journal about what we were learning. There were hours spent with family on the weekends, as we traveled around. The slow feel of each day was a huge blessing, especially because of the time we had to build new friendships and to treasure 'old' ones.

A rainbow over the falls at Letchworth State Park, near Houghton

Time has sped back up again. Since getting back home on Saturday night, we haven't really stopped moving, and it feels like it. If we get to leave when we are hoping to leave, we will fly out less than two weeks from today! There are (approximately) a billion things to do between now and then, and I'm definitely feeling the pressure and the temptation to be consumed with stress. However, the perspective that I gained from the slowdown was that each day has a use, in God's view. He's in the busy times as well as the slow ones. So I'm working on taking deep breaths and, minute by minute, turning the worries and lists and tasks over to God. We'll be moving fast and doing a lot over the next weeks, but I want to keep that perspective of resting in God's presence. I want to keep the perspective of valuing each minute with friends and family. I know I will be re-adjusting my perspective multiple times a day, though prayer (and deep breaths), to keep that peace and God's view on my time. So if you think of me, pray for my perspective on TIME-- chances are, I'll be praying for it then too!

Training at Houghton College, New York - PFO

from Seth

Birds singing, trees swaying in the breeze, bright sunlight shining over everything ... such is my experience at the present moment. I am sitting in my dorm room, on a Saturday afternoon of our training conference (Pre-field Orientation, or PFO for short) here at Houghton College in western New York. If you want to find out what sort of place Houghton is, you could probably get a good idea by looking it up on Google Maps. It is about half an hour away from everything, and about an hour or so away from Buffalo, which is the nearest sizable city, so we are really out in the middle of nature for the most part. Presently, Laura and I are winding down and taking a little bit of time to catch up on some things that have been waiting for me to do them (such as making a blog post about our training experience so far).

We have been here since last Saturday, and have spent this first week "drinking from a fire hose" of information. We have had about seven to eight hours of intense information and training every day since Monday morning, and we are feeling a little bit overwhelmed with information, but all of it has been very practical and useful to us as we prepare to go teach overseas. We will continue the intense information overload on Monday morning, and will finish up with our training next Friday.

But not everything here involves working and studying and learning. There are also social times to be shared with fellow trainees, and we have developed good relationships with some of them, relationships that we expect will last long after this training conference is over. I am including a couple of pictures of some of those people below (one of them was taken yesterday evening during an excursion to a nearby state park).

 A group of us learned how to make Arabic Tea, a very popular social event in Africa

Us along with several of the other people with whom we are starting to develop good friendships. (That is indeed a waterfall behind us, just in case you were wondering)

Overall, our experience here has been excellent up to this point, and we hope it continues to be so through the end of next week.