Muddy Bums...

Storm coming in from the mountains. Taking away our beautiful blue sky.

We spent the day at the hanger. The grass needed to be cut, which most people would think isn't too difficult of a job.....however, in the Philippines it is a different story. They don't own lawnmowers over here. Believe it or not, they walk up and down their yard using a weed wacker to cut their lawn.

Sam takes a swing at the grass.

Of course this is the general public of the Philippines, as missionaries it becomes a little more fun. Our group only owns 1 weed wacker and the amount of gasoline it requires is too much to fit into our missionary budget. So we use machetes. Its a very delicate process. A group of 4 or so people have machetes and sticks. They use the stick to get to the bottom of the grass and then swipe the machete acrossed it. Then another group of 4 or so collect the piles of grass and weeds that pile up. "John Deere, wherefore art thou?" lol, Needless to say, we spent most of the day cutting the grass.

It all went smootly, until one of the missionaries came upon....a snake. It was kinda funny. We were taking a quick water break and as we were walking out of the house we saw Michiel screaming and running backwards off of the grass area and Andrew repeatedly slamming his machete to the ground from where she came. Using his ninja powers Andrew was able to decapitate the snake. Suddenly the slow grass cutting process got even slower. lol.

The poor chicken :(

While cutting grass, Rannie was told to kill a chicken for Rovalyn's birthday party later. It was seriously the most horrible sight we had ever witnessed and/or photographed....it made us want to become vegetarians...forever!


After 5 hours of cutting grass, it was lunch time. We had forgotten to bring a lunch with us, so we took the motorcycle back to our house. Which brings us to our **PRAISE GOD MOMENT** for today:
It is rainy season here in the Philippines, so as we rode we were dodging puddles left and right. Upon dodging a rather large puddle we moved to the side of the road. However, this particular part of the road was covered large, loose gravel. All of sudden the motorbike slipped from under us and we fell onto the gravel and slid about 1 ft and landed in a big, muddy puddle. After coming to, the conversation went a little like this:
Allison: Are you okay?!?!
Sam: Are you okay?!?!
Allison: Are you okay?!?
Sam: Are you okay?!?!
Allison: I'm fine. Are you okay?!?!
Sam: I'm fine too. Well, if you could just get the bike handle off of me, then I'd be fine.

Many Filipinos stopped to make sure we were okay....that or they just wanted to say the saw 2 silly Americans crash in the road...lol no, i'm sure it was sincere. After 5 minutes of making sure everything still worked, we went to check out the bike. Surprisingly there was no damage done to it, or us, at all. And like cowgirls that were just bucked off a horse, we got back on and road on.

Sam's bruise...

It was amazing really. We hit the ground pretty hard, at a pretty moderate speed, and we have nothing to show for it. No blood, no broken bones, no scrapes. All we have is a bruise on Sam's leg and Mud all over the back of our pants. It was kinda funny, as we were riding back, Allison asked, "Why didn't we just ride through the puddle?" to which Sam replied, "I didn't want to get our feet wet." Allison just laughed and said, "Well, my muddy bum thanks you for that."and that has been your **Praise God Moment** for today.

After eating, we headed back to the project to start building a fence. This, like cutting grass, is a very delicate process. First, we used the trunks of bamboo and tie them together. And then we intertwine bamboo stick with them. It wasn't as difficult as we thought it would be.

Gurdie brings the bamboo sticks

Jam helps put bamboo sticks in the fence.

Happy Birthday Rovalyn!!

The birthday present we made for
Rovalyn (thanks for the inspiration
Brandy)

Afterwards we celebrated Rovalyn's birthday. Rovalyn is a fellow missionary and mother to 1 year old Haddie whom we love to take pictures of. So we thought it would be perfect to put together a 8 x 10 photo of all the different pictures we've taken of her. So we had it printed and hiding in Allison's bag. But as we were out of the room, Haddie went into our bag and found the photo. She, obviously, liked it and then ran to show her mother what she found. Lol, and that is the story of how Rovalyn got her birthday present. Lol. Till next time...

~Me & Her