sour cream fries.

good day to you all!


for me, it is 9am, thursday, march the 8th. but most of you at home will be reading this in the evening around 7:30pm, wednesday, march the 7th. crazy!


we made it safely here to the philippines, and are settling in to our new home in baguio city with pastor sam and his family. they have a nice house, averagely sized, and there are 11 people living here right now. it is fun to be able to continue to room with ashley and charis, especially because we already know how to live together. 



the last couple days have felt longer than life. we arrived on tuesday morning around 6:45am philippines time,  after 34h of travel time and then proceeded to stay up all day in order to offset any jet lag. that seems to have worked quite well, because, even though we are tired by about 7pm, it feels normal to sleep at night and be awake during the day. 
pastor sam has been good to us in letting us relax quite a bit for these first few days. both yesterday and tuesday we were able to have some free time in the morning, which we have primarily used to go for walks, journal, and enjoy the surroundings. 

goin for a stroll in baguio - see those mountains?! beautiful.

during the afternoons, we have been taken around the city by pastor sam and sometimes ate (pronounced "ah-tay"; it is a term of respect used for older women. kuya, pronounced "kui-yah", is the term of respect for older men) evelyn (pastor sam's wife) as well. on tuesday we went to the mall - and it is HUGE! ohmygoodness. think 5 full floors, 2 being underground, and a food court the size of my church. insane! yesterday, we were able to go see an area of the city called camp john hay, which i believe was, in part, founded by ashley's grandparents! they were missionaries here in the philippines for 34 years! they spent 2 terms (i'm unsure of how long their terms were, sorry) in baguio itself as well. it has blessed me to see ashley so excited, because this is the place of her ancestors! so to speak ;) 

a mansion called - you guessed it - "the mansion". HA.

a miniature statue of liberty! so awesome. ash was pumped!

then, yesterday evening, we were privileged to go to a prayer meeting at the ambiong ("ahm-bee-ong") church, one of the 3 churches pastor sam has planted). it was very touching to see how real the people were there. we spent a short time reading 1 john 2:24-29, then pastor sam did some teaching on the passage. following this, my team introduced ourselves to the members who came to the meeting. after that, the filipino attendees shared some prayer/praise items (items of thanksgiving and prayer requests in their lives) and we proceeded to pray for them! it was a cool experience, and i was definitely very blessed by it. i am looking forward to more of this sort of experience as we are here!

then for supper, we ate takeout from jollibee, the local mcdonald's clone. it was actually pretty decent! i was wary about it, as i don't particularly enjoy fast food, but it seemed to match the style of the rest of the food here - deep fried. a jollibee specialty is their sour cream fries! i was excited to try these, because sour cream and onion chips are my favourite chips! i was not disappointed. the fries were fantastic! i vote we start a sour cream fries movement in canada. anyone with me? 


i'll try to get more pictures of me/my team up soon. keep checking up on this blog and hopefully next time i will have posted more photos. 


today our schedule looks much the same - relaxation in the morning and some touring in the afternoon. please pray for safety and openness to this new culture. 


another prayer request would just be that details get properly sorted out. as the financial person on my team, it is a bit stressful to be taking care of my team's budget, and we are having a bit of issues with that right now. i'm not going to go into any details, but please pray that God's timing would prevail and that these issues would be resolved in a manner that displays Christ's love to all and in a spirit of Godly stewardship. 


until next time! 
love,
tejal :)