What if it is me?

My friend Grace's father, a faithful minister of God, is in a coma. When I read her updates and her blog, I was reminded of two things:

1) God is good no matter what our circumstance is. When we thought we might just fall apart and not be able to stand up, God is there to sustain and lift us up.
2) With hope for eternal life, sickness and death are not as painful. Don't get me wrong, they are still extremely painful to go through, for those who are taking care of the sick and have to live on, but the pain is so much more bearable.

I wonder what I will do if I were in Grace's shoe. I probably won't be in Hong Kong if anything like that happen to my parents. I will probably be making trips back to Hong Kong to take care of them. It is so hard to imagine how would it be like, if I have to go through what Grace is going through. But one thing I know for sure: the God whom has sustained Grace, will lift me up also, if that was me.

"I have a guy...."

It is important to know 'guys' when living in Cebu, 'guys' are people who you know and trust who can get things done. You need a computer guy, a guy who can get you visas, a guy to repair your windows, a guy who can fix your car, fix your dripping toilet and your broken washing machine. We are starting to realize the importance of having 'guys'. What if you don't know a particular kind of guy? Always ask your helper, or people at church, they can always come up with someone. "I have a guy who can fix it." This is a very important thing.

Found!

I am so joyful because the green plastic tupperware cup is found! Dan had Maris, our housekeeper called the restaurant this morning, they said they would look for it. A few hours later, they called back and said yes, someone has set it aside and we can go pick it up! I am so happy, not just because of the cup being returned, but also the fact that I have faith in human nature again. God is good.

A lost plastic cup

An hour after we left the restaurant tonight, I discovered that we have left Kioni's Tupperware cup in the restaurant. I was very upset, in fact, I was almost in tears, because that is Kioni's favourite cup. You might say why are you so upset over losing a plastic cup? Well, not particulary about the cup, (though the cup is a very nice $5.00 Tupperware cup), rather, about the fact that even if we go back, we will not able to retrieve it. Dan plain refused to go back to the restaurant, didn't even want to try, because it is highly unlikely that we will get it back. I was upset about the fact that if that happens in where we have been in the U.S., even after a few days, we will be able to get it back, but not here.

If any of you see the kiwi colour tupperware cup, (Impressions 11-oz. tumbler with Drip-Less™ straw seals, any colour ffor that matter), in a garage sale or somewhere cheap, please get it for me! I went to the Tupperware website, it is too expensive ($23.50 for a set of 4!) I got the one that I lost in the Clothe Horse at Trinity for free.

Being upset over a lost plastic cup, haven't had that kind of feeling for a long time, that's why I am sure it is not about the lost cup, rather, the fact that once it is left, it is gone.

A 25-year shopping trip

It was just a normal shopping trip when Jaeyana Beuraheng bade farewell to her eight children as she left to cross the border into Malaysia, but it would be 25 years before she would find her way home.

Now, at the age of 76, she has been reunited with her family and has finally told how her misfortune began when she boarded the wrong bus.

Jaeyana would almost certainly have made it home without mishap had it not been that she speaks only Yawi, a dialect spoken by Muslims in southern Thailand. But unable to write, read, or speak Thai or English she boarded a bus for Bangkok, about 800 miles north, by mistake rather than travelling back to her home in Narathiwat.

Bewildered by the noise and traffic of the capital she boarded another bus hoping it would take her home. It did not.

This one took her to Chiang Mai, close to the border with Burma and another 400 miles away. There she became lost and unable to explain her predicament. In Chiang Mai she spent five years begging and with her dark skin was taken to be a member of a hill tribe.

When police rounded up beggars in the northern capital in 1987 she was arrested on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Unable to determine where she came from, officials sent her to a social services hostel where she has been ever since.

Jintana Satjang, a director of the center where Jaeyana made her home, said: “We thought she was a mute.” Jaeyana was referred to as “Mrs Mon” because staff thought her mutterings sounded like Mon, a minority language in Burma.

Jaeyana would probably have spent the rest of her life at the hostel had not three students from her home province who spoke her language arrived at the centre for training last month. They struck up a friendship and she was able to tell them how she became separated from her family.

The students made inquiries and found her youngest son, Mamu, who is now 35. They sent him her picture by mobile phone.

“I was shocked and overjoyed when I saw the picture,” said Mamu. He said he and his brothers and sisters had searched for years in Thailand and Malaysia until they were told their mother had been run over by a train in Yala.

“I remembered her face even though I have not seen her for 25 years,” he said.

Story from Fox News.

The good and the bad

The Good
The missionary ladies in Cebu went to a nice little restaurant for lunch. It is in a upscale subdivision called Santa Nino, seems like it is converted from a garage, but it is so cute and well-kept that you will not suspect it at all upon stepping into the restaurant. My first impression of this restaurant is their table setting. While most restaurants in Cebu put a big spoon (serving spoon size) and a fork on the place mat, this restaurant has a salad fork, a dinner fork and a knife on the place mat, complete with a real cloth napkin! The bathroom smells good too, with no water running on the floor. Now, that's impressive!

The menu is interesting, you choose a sandwich out of about 20 different kinds of offers, then a soup from a soup list, a salad from a list of 15, and then a dessert from 4 different kinds of cakes. A four course meal and the cost is: $160 peso, that's $3.20 USD!

We had a wonderful time, and I sure will return to 10 Dove street with my family.

We like that subdivision also, we will do some research and see if we can afford to live there, since by June, when the renter of this house comes back, we will have to move.

The Bad
We again have no food in the house, so we head out to find a restaurant. While we were strolling along an eatery area, the power went out, so we headed back out, while driving, we kept seeing sections of the city losing power. So it forced us to the largest mall in Cebu, the Ayala Mall. We stepped into the Tequila Restaurant, music was not too loud, that's good. The waitress was quick to serve, the menu was shuffled into our hands before we were settled down with Kioni. We asked them to wait a little. Like most restaurants do in Cebu, they gave us two settings instead of three, often they don't see Kioni as a 'person' who needs her own place setting, which is very frustrating. When we were looking at the menu, we realize that there are lots of wrong spellings in the menu, 'Fich and Ships' (Fish and Chip?); Fynger (finger?); and Zappetitzer (Appetitzer?). I already have a bad feeling about this restaurant, if a restaurant cannot manage to put together a menu correctly, what are they going to do with the food. We ordered an appetizer platter for Kioni and I to share, and Dan ordered a burrito.

The drink came, the Diet Coke that Dan ordered was flat, Dan asked for another one, it was still flat. Then the platter came, my jaw dropped when I saw the platter. There was a small pile of broken corn chips, a bowl of not so warm chili, a tiny salad with two cubes of 1/4 inch of avocado and some tomatoes, 4 small pieces of quesadilla, and most shockingly, one single sad looking chicken wing. The chicken wing was so small it must come from a chicken that was about two weeks old. There was supposed to be some "bleucheese and celery" that came with the platter, but it was missing. Dan asked for it, three waiters and waitresses came and found was what was missing. OK, they brough it out for us right a way, the "bleucheese" was in a tiny little plastic cup, with ONE two inch long celery in it. The platter costs $345 peso, that is about $7 UDS! Dan's buritto came, the black beans were tough as little rocks, there was no sauce, so it was pretty dry, it came wrapped up in a piece of foil, looks like it was pre-made somewhere and just get warmed up a bit in the restaurant.

Dan's had enough of everything, when his bottomless coke sat there empty, he told the waiter that he should be watching and do some actual serving, instead having Dan to ask him to fill it up everytime.

In the mean time, Kioni was scratching her leg, she was bitten by a mosquito. Thankfully, I have learned to always carry a bottle of bug spray since I arrive in Cebu.

This was the worse restaurant experience we have ever in the 5 months period that we have been here.

Aberdeen, here we come...

Dan received an email this morning from the University of Aberdeen, he has been accepted into the PhD program in the School of Divinity!

This is much faster than we have expected, he sent in the application just over a month ago, and we already recieved the official acceptance email, an official acceptance letter will come later, to Dan's mother's home.

We are of course delighted, to say the least. Though there are still many details to take care of, like housing, scholarships, etc. We are looking forward to the 3-4 years in Scotland.

You may wonder if this will change our duration of stay in Cebu. Well, we know before we came that we are comitted to be in Cebu for two years and we will also apply for the PhD program in January 2007. Our plan is always to apply for the program, if accepted, we will ask for a one year extension before we actually go to Scotland.

So the answer is, we will stay in Cebu until summer of 2008 as planned, then we will pack up, go back to the U.S. for a few months to visit our supporters, and off we go to Scotland. Unless the extension request is denied, which we don't see that happening. If the request indeed gets rejected, I guess the Lord REALLY want us to go in 2007.

We have started praying about scholarships, yes, we need multiple scholarships in order to go to Scotland. It will be impossible for us to pay the tuition and living expenses if there were no scholarships granted. As a student's spouse, the law allows me to work full-time, but with Kioni's requiring more and more attention each day, it will not be the most ideal if I have to work to support the family again. A lot to pray about, don't know what God is going to say at this point about that.