That about does it for the Boracay blog (at least for me). I really enjoyed updating everyone during the trip! Feel free to swing by my regular blog some time.

Love you guys! Thanks so much for letting me be a part of this with you.

I’ve only got a minute to write. We’re in Manila, about to spend the day sight-seeing, and maybe at a movie (Dark Night I think was the concensus pick).

We can’t wait to see you guys! If you have any questions about pickup you can call Calvary Church and ask them to connect you with Melissa. It sounds like we have some parents wanting to drive to LAX, and the rest can pick their child up at Calvary.

Yay for long flights!

Wow, I can’t believe it is finally the last day. This has been such a fantastic trip!

Today was our REAL last day of work at the construction site. We finished the first project early, so today we got to get our hands dirty once more on the next phase. I can’t wait to see this building up and running. I’m definitely going to be praying for God to bring some dynamic leaders to the ministry to come alongside those that are already there. This building will be ground zero for so much goodness, and it will need a God-sized vision to unleash its full potential. WOW… its SO GOOD.

Well, we visited the now-famous “Jonah’s” one more time tonight for ANOTHER shake (I think I had six while I was here… bleh). A handful of the students are getting Henna tattoos right now (not permanent). A few others are running around trying to find last minute souvenirs and good deals on fake watches. I keep trying to explain to them that, “Even though it’s only six dollars, its still a fake watch.”  But what do I know, I’m just a grownup.

Today we visited a local high school and got to entertain about 300 students. Hailey and Sean M gave their testimonies, and the leader John gave a lesson using a handful of magnets to describe our relationship with God. After that Rolando (the pastor here at the church) gave a quick explanation to the ones who didn’t speak fluent English, and then he led the students in THE LONGEST PRAYER I HAVE EVER BEEN A PART OF. I’m not kidding- it was somewhere around seven or eight minutes long! That brother loves to pray. I was supposed to say something afterwards but I just dismissed them figuring he had said it all, haha! It was a great morning

We’re in Manilla tomorrow night, and then heading home the next day! All of us have loved the trip, and we’ll miss this place in many ways, but we’re all ready to come home. I miss my wife a bunch… and Chipotle (but not as much as my wife).

I’m going to try once again to print these comments so that the students can see them! I have passed along a bunch of your messages to them. They’ve encouraged us so much! We love you guys, and can’t wait to see you. I’m not sure if there is internet access in Manilla, so this might be the last entry. If so, we’ll see you guys in Santa Ana on Wednesday night!

Everything is going well! We went to church this morning, and we’ve got the afternoon off until our next feeding site.

Chantelle is doing great now. She is back in action and she seemed 100%. We had her rest just to make sure it didn’t get any worse. Side note: I promise not to over-work any of the students We take breaks constantly, and I’ve asked a dozen of them to skip work times when they showed any sort of fatigue. God has got his hands on the team- we’ve got nothing to fear

Today we went to a feeding site, some of the students did some “sailing”, and for most of the day we were just able to relax. It was much needed rest!

I just learned that we are going to be back at the work site pouring some more concrete on Monday. We haven’t let the students know that yet, but I’m sure that they will be excited to hear it. We would rather go home sore than relaxed!!! It probably won’t be a full day of construction since we are trying to get the students to visit another high school.

Lots of the kids are homesick but are handling it well. Chantelle has been off her feet all day… the poor thing has been the target of a few too many bug bites. Jessica is taking care of her, and you can join us in praying that God would go ahead and just kill all of the bugs and spiders on the island, at least until we leave.

This trip has made me so excited about my role at Calvary. We’ve had so many great conversations, and these guys desperately want everything that God has to offer them. I’ll be talking in church tomorrow about how God has blessed his followers so that they can be a blessing, and I’ll have a whole bunch of living/breathing examples I can point to right there in front of me. If you’re interested, here are the verses I’ll be using: Genesis 12:1-3, Ephesians 4:12, 1 Peter 2:12, and Luke 22:27. Laura Copeland is sharing something as well tomorrow, so Calvary has pretty much got church covered on all sides tomorrow!

The college team leaves tomorrow after church, so I’m sure there will be pictures aplenty on their Facebooks in a couple days.

Thank you for your prayers! We can definitely feel them

We played a basketball game in front of a couple hundred people tonight and we actually won! Chantelle shared a brief testimony during halftime, and then Dan Beaver invited them to church on Sunday! We had a great time playing against the guys

We’re starting late tomorrow to let everyone sleep in.

This computer is horrible so I’m signing off! Much love

We poured the last of the concrete this morning! We had prepared for 3 days of construction, but we cranked it out in a day and a half

Tonight is the big basketball game with Calvary up against the Filipino finest. We’ve invited hundreds of people to come and watch, so it should be a lot of fun! We’ve decided to wear some ridiculously cheesy lime greem shorts with out red Boracay4Christ shirts.

Anthony and I were both stung by a jelly fish today. He got stung, and like a big goof I went looking for the jelly fish that stung him. It found me first. Nobody peed on anybody, we just toughed it out. We’re both fine, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be!

My camera died, and I havent had a chance to recharge it, but we have LOTS of cameras taking pictures still! I will try to charge mine, and maybe I can snag someone’s before my next blog visit so I can upload some more.

In about 8 hours I am going to be a complete mess. We worked SO HARD today! The students were amazing! Every one of us was covered, some head to to, in concrete mix today after a full day of moving a million pounds of concrete mix from the ground to the second floor. Each bucket was probably anywhere from 10-15 pounds, and we all had one in our hands pretty much constantly. But NOBODY complained, not even once! In fact, people were volunteering to do the most difficult jobs, and by “people” I am definitely referring to the girls too! I could not believe how strong and dedicated they were. I kept waiting for someone to collapse, but they just sang and laughed and talked all the way through it. We should be able to finish it tomorrow (which nobody expected). Kudos to these students once again.

We had another crew visit a high school for half of the day, before joining us at the worksite for the second half. They spoke in front of 400 high school students, and from what I heard they did a fantasic job! By the way, I promise to be honest and tell you if the students completely stink at something! It might seem like I’m just painting a pretty picture of everything they do because I’m biased, but they REALLY ARE kicking butt as much as I have said they are!

I’m gonna cut this entry short and go hang with the crew. Thank you for keeping up with our journey!

We took it easy today because the building had two inspectors coming to approve the work we have done so far. We got the green light to move forward from both of them (praise God!), so tomorrow we pour concrete! That will be a two to three day job, and will definitely be the most intense labor so far.

For their “easy day”, the team was taken snorkling! It was a fantastic few hours of exploring the reefs on the other side of the island. I had no idea how THIN this island is… we walked from one side to the other in about ten minutes!

This afternoon we went to another neighborhood to hang out with some children and play some basketball with the adults. What our students DIDN’T know was that this was an entirely Muslim neighborhood. Our missionaries knew that, and so did I, but just about every one of the kids had no idea. We were invited to come and hang out because the church has done a fantastic job of building relationships here on the island, even with people outside of the church! So… here’s where it gets good. Our students are AMAZING with the children, so naturally they decided to play with them right away. So on one half of this common area in the neighborhood you have a hundred kids and their moms and our students all having fun. And on the other half (stick with me here for a sec), you’ve got a handful of us playing basketball. There are probably a hundred Filipino men out by the courts watching us play (by the way they were amazing, and by the way again WE WON THE GAME). So picture all of that happening in an exclusively Muslim setting. Got it? And then the students decide to teach the kids a new song, one that they learned during their training before they came to Boracay. Here are the lyrics in the native language Tagalog:

BUHAY, BUHAY,BUHAY KAILAN PA MAN
SI HESUS AY BUHAY
BUHAY KAILAN PA MAN
BUHAY, BUHAY, BUHAY KAILAN PA MAN
SI HESUS AY BUHAY KAILAN PA MAN.

Seems innocent enough, right? Well here’s the translation:

ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE FOREVERMORE
MY JESUS IS ALIVE
ALIVE FOREVERMORE
ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE FOREVERMORE
MY JESUS IS ALIVE FOREVERMORE
SING ALELUIA, SING ALELUIA
MY JESUS IS ALIVE FOREVERMORE
SING ALELUIA, SING ALELUIA
MY JESUS IS ALIVE

Our students were smack dab in the middle of a Muslim community singing about Jesus being alive forevermore!!!!!!! Are you kidding me? Does it get any better than that? I’ve got to be honest— I was a little nervous when I heard them start the song. I looked around at the men watching the basketball games and was waiting for someone to get upset.

But nobody did.

Our students sang songs to Jesus, claiming that he is “ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE forevermore”- and my hope is that our Muslim friends felt a little bit dissatisfied with Muhammad (who isn’t alive any more) as they listened to our kids (and their kids) sing, and saw the joy of it all. You see, prophets don’t live forever… so hopefully that song sparked some thoughts and conversations about who Jesus is. We’re going to see all of those men again this Friday night for a basketball tournament. Don’t worry (Lindsay), they aren’t upset with us!I’m nervous to play them again though. They are amazing athletes! I am about a foot taller than every single one of them, EXCEPT one of them, who somehow is like 3 inches taller than me. He’s a beast.

In other news: John Nellessen is leading a house church with some adults from the church tonight. He’s a stud, and I’m so glad to have him and Tom and Jessica with me leading the trip.

Seven of our students (plus Dan our missionary) are going into a public high school tomorrow to hang out in some classrooms and share their stories. Dan will facilitate a Q&A session between our students and the Filipino students, and then our students will have a chance to just hang out and have some fun with them. This is just one more amazing door that is open here in Boracay. What public school invites missionaries in? This one does, since the principal comes to the church!

It turns out that I’m teaching in the church this Sunday. Pray for me if you think about it, as I consider what to share over the next couple days. And pray for Eric from the college team if you think about it. He’s our first one to not feel very well. He’s doing fine, we think he just got a bit dehydrated.

I uploaded a handful of pictures down below, go take a look! I think they loaded twice… but that’s better than not at all!

Things are going great! Today we tied together all of the rebarb (sp?) and got ready to pour the concrete which will be the floor for the second floor. We had a crew at another feeding site, and I heard that went really well too. The feeding site we went to yesterday was pretty amazing. Tucked away RIGHT BEHIND this main strip of shops and luxurious hotels for all of the tourists is this little community of maybe 150 people. Within a stone’s throw of luxury is intense poverty… but that doesn’t stop these people from being absolutely lovable. They were so kind and grateful for our visit… I wanted to kidnap a few of them (in Jesus’ name of course) and take them home. I’d betcha a million bucks that each one of those people will benefit from having this community center in their town when it is completed. I can’t say it enough how amazing it is that this sort of thing will be available to these people. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of these students will want to come back and work there! Consider yourself warned

I’m relentless with the water drinking- I ask the kids about every 12 seconds if they’re drinking enough. We’re being fed very well, mostly from a group of women that take care of our meals. Eating out here is VERY affordable, so we’ve gone out a couple times. The students have walked 4 miles every day to go get a shake at “Jonah’s”. I don’t think the shake is worth the walk, but we love the journey together.

We start pouring the concrete tomorrow! It’s going to be hard work, but these students are amazing. We’ll be taking lots of breaks away from the sun, but this will probably be the most tenuous day yet. Please be praying for health and energy and JOY for our team! Everything has been amazing so far, and I’d love to see it stay that way!!

Gotta wrap this up and hit the sack. Keep the prayers and comments coming