the strongest bond

hello friends!

yet another week has ticked on by, bringing me 10 sleeps closer to home. this is crazy! we are officially over halfway through our assignment phase. on saturday, we had been here exactly 8 weeks, leaving only 5 more to experienced, lived in, and loved. this is definitely a bittersweet thought!

just so you all know, i'm posting about my life from my last blog post until sunday the 29th. the things that have happened and will happen this week will come up in my next post.

last week was mostly spent in a town called banaue, which is a 190km drive from baguio. ashley's grandparents started a clinic called "good news clinic" there many years ago, while they were missionaries here in the philippines. we decided to go check out the town and clinic for our mid-term retreat. it was an added bonus that banaue also happens to be the location of some of the world's most spectacular rice terraces. to give you an idea beyond the pictures that will follow in this post, google "rice terraces" and the pictures that will come up are literally where i was not more than a week ago. amazing!

the famed rice terraces.
more beautiful than pictures do them justice.

on the way to banaue, we passed the highest point in the
philippine highway system!  a touristy picture right here.

our time in banaue was meant to be relaxing and refreshing, to give us energy for the second half of assignment - and it was just that! we spent time hanging out as a team (we watched a lot of a documentary series called "human planet" by b.b.c.), swam in the pool at the banaue hotel, ate delicious food, slept in, did puzzles, had girls/guys time (separately i mean), and shopped at the outdoor markets! it was a great retreat :)

we love those rice terraces :)

you need only look at it to be refreshed

the generosity of the filipino people continues to astound me. in banaue, we stayed in a guest house on the property of the good news clinic for free. people repeatedly invited us into their homes for meals and/or coffee simply because they remembered ashley's grandfather. people gave us tours of banaue, using their time and energy on 5 virtual strangers. a 64-year-old man named chester took brady and jonas on a 6 hour hike through the rice terraces. the examples go on and on, but all in all, i was very blessed by the outpouring of love we received from these people. God is good!

brady on the hike the boys took with chester.
chester didn't make it into any pictures, unfortunately!

recently i have been reflecting on family - and how important family is to me! i think we all take our families for granted at some point, myself definitely included, but now that i have been away for what feels like a long time and talking about boys with my sister or making nachos with my brother aren't an every-day option, i am realizing just how blessed i am to have the best family ever. even though i'm halfway across the world, i can still email my mum any time for help with a problem, or to send me chocolate, or just to vent about something, and she's always there for me. my dad will always answer my questions about faith or help me to see the truth for myself, and he continues to be one of my greatest role models. they are the greatest support i could have, the strongest bond, and i love them a lot! so, thanks famjam, for being awesome!
to all you reading this, i encourage you to take time today to appreciate YOUR family - even just by hugging your mum or hanging out with your siblings. they're worth it!

ignore bad lighting/picture quality - but these be
my beloved parents right here. love you famjams :)

last weekend, my team was in charge of both youth groups (balacbac and ambiong) because many of the young people in both churches are away at a leadership training camp. i volunteered to teach the Bible study at ambiong, and am i ever glad i did! i realized yet again how much i love teaching and hanging out with youth. God has definitely given me a heart for both, and it excites me to think that i could spend a large portion of my life doing just that. it doesn't need to be at a youth group, and i know that God can use me in any teaching situation, because He is bigger than and beyond the walls of the church building. teaching also runs in my blood, as my dad and both his parents are/were teachers. it's cool to see how families are linked by common passions and/or gifts, because i can learn from my grandma and my dad about how to be a good teacher, and then possibly pass that on to my own children! 

pastor sam and ate evelyn's second daughter, hope, has her own daughter, heart, who is here with us this week! heart is 7, and she is probably the cutest little girl ever. she is sweet, well behaved, and always wants to have fun with us! last night, charis, ash, heart, and i had a sleepover! it was a really fun time :) we painted nails, talked, coloured, and then - surprise! - slept! it was fun to just be girls and hang out, especially because charis, ash and i are so much older than she - yet the bonds of simply being female transcend age! so great :) heart and i have also had a couple dance parties - which are probably the best thing ever. if you don't believe me, go dance with an innocent, 7-year=old and then try to tell me you didn't have a good time!
(i would post a picture with heart - but we sadly have not taken one yet :P next post maybe?)

well, that's not the longest post, i know, but that's what's been going on in my life recently.
talk to you all soon!

blessings, 
tejal :)