WAHOOOOOO!

GUESS WHAT!?

Yes, it's true....God knew all along, but we sure didn't...it's pretty RAD! God is faithful!

Ya know, when we're desiring to please Him (even when we fail, but the desire is there), He always takes care of us!

So...you ready for this!?

Promise's muchly coveted provisional temporary passport arrived last night by courier to our home in Davao!!!! YEAH FOR CANADA! With 7 days to spare before we take off for furlough, God answered our prayers and Promise can now leave the Philippines legally! YAHOOO! What a miracle!

Another miracle...today I took my last and final midwifery exam for school. At 1 pm, just after my day shift duty which started at 6 am, I started the loooong exam....high on 3 cups of coffee. I was the first one finished, so that either means I knew the answers quickly or I failed miserably and guessed quickly! Ha ha ha. We'll see. There was a big portion of one section that was on circumcision. Unfortunately, I did not spend much time studying that....felt pretty unsure about that. I came home and poured over my textbooks to find that indeed, I missed a few of those. I hope I passed!

To celebrate, I went and made another pot of coffee...but not for me. For these guys pictured below.....

For those of you that have visited us, you may recognize them....they are our favorite "hobble-hobble" (motorbike) drivers, Kuya Chris and Kuya Ray. They LOVE the Bird and requested that before we leave for Canada that we take a picture or two. They crack me up. We've debated on running a corner business with them-- "100 pesos for a picture with a puti (white) baby!" Haven't tried it, yet. :) We didn't charge them for this one. Ha ha ha.

Kuya Chris and I have had sooooo many talks about Jesus and about the state of the world. He maintains the idea that he deserves to go to hell and therefore, he will go there despite Jesus. Most of the time he is joking around, but I know he has some faith...in what, I am not sure. God has been working on him for some time, though.

So today, we shared a pot of coffee and some cheap Filipino chocolates.

We also took some pics of the construction on our street. It's pretty obnoxious. For those of you who visited us, you remember our lovely sewage ditch? Well, it finally clogged up to the point that the city made a decision to re-dig it. Apparently, our neighbors down the street own a chicken farm and would slaughter the chickens dumping all the waste products (use the full extent of your imagination) into the ditch...the nastiness would heat up in the hot tropical sun and "bless" us with the most fantastic stench known to man. It was enough to make you gag on your way out the door, accuse the person in front of you of cutting the cheese, and vow never to breathe deep again. In fact, Tim and I decided that as soon as the Filipino "summer" started, we would shut all the anterior windows and run the aircon exclusively just so we had some form of air purification. When it came to choosing either a soaring electricity bill or clean air, clean air was the superior choice.

The ditch looked even worse than it smelled, if you can imagine.

Yes, here is a pic of our apartment building (we're up top on the right) with our pleasant ditch and Filipino workers galore. We are kinda situated on a mote now. With only a wobbly wooden bridge connecting us to the rest of Davao, crossing to the other side is always an adventure with Promise in tow.

Next week is graduation, a busy and full week of birth shifts and Friday, a flight to Manila....wow...feeling so...ummm....giddy... :)

Meanwhile, Tim is finishing up water projects to prepare for furlough and setting up new projects for Toti while we're away. Toti is up in Butuan this week for Impact Nations' Journey of Compassion and absolutely LOVING it.

The Bird is great and growing soooo very fast. This passed week, she had her first swim in a pool at our dear friends', Darrel and Shannon's place. She LOVES the water like her daddy!

That's about it for now....Until later....Be blessed!