Dinner time

We've just started making Holly finish everything on her plate before she gets dessert.  Last night she was trying pretty hard to get out of it.  First, of all, I said "Holly please eat your beans."  She said "no thanks"!!  Hmm..
Then a few minutes later we look over to see her stuffing all her beans into her hand, pressed against her chest.  She looks down at her empty plate.  "All finished" she announces.  I was cracking up in the kitchen, while Stefan calmly explained to her that she actually has to eat it all, not just take it off her plate!
Her last ditch attempt was to reach over to Zac's high chair and put all her beans on his table.  Good try, but she didn't get away with that one either!

The next Australian Idol?

Has she got what it takes?

Counting

I haven't set out to teach Holly to count, but have been counting to her every now and again, like when it's ten more pushes on the swing, for example.  So I was pretty surprised the other day when she counted from one to ten on her own!  Here is a video of her doing it.

Smokey Mountain Kids

The above picture is of an area on the outskirts of Manila called 'Smokey Mountain'. Here, people, many of whom are children, earn a living (if it can be called that) by sorting out rubbish that gets dumped there and selling what can be re-used. In essence, they are recycling.

A mother from my (Lara’s) class visited this area 10 years ago. She saw that there was no hope for these children. As young as 3 years old, they spent their days scouring the dumpsite, barefoot, for plastic, paper, cardboard... anything that could be recycled. Their older brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents were all doing this too. It’s not too hard to imagine what these children will be doing when they’re 30, 40, 50... And their children like them.

Her heart was greatly moved, and she decided to come back to the Philippines permanently and set up a school for these children. Ten years later, there are about 430 elementary aged children attending her school. They no longer spend their whole day on the rubbish tip. They are learning to read and write. Maybe, just maybe, these kids will have a different future to their parents and grandparents before them.

What a blessing it is to partner in this ministry.

Our new friends

A week ago we wrote about our angry little kittens. Well... our angry little kittens pretty soon turned into our cute, lovable, attention seeking little kittens. We've been giving them milk every day, and one day decided just to pick them up (even though they were still hissing at us!). That pretty soon softened them up, and now it's no more hissing... just crying out for us. All the time! All they want now is attention. But we don't mind too much. They're pretty cute, and so very curious. I (Lara) think Stefan especially loves them. ;) (And these photos prove it!) So, whether we like it or not, I think we have ourselves some new pets.

Angry, angry kittens

Recently, we've been hearing kittens making a whole lot of noise - more than you think would be possible from such small things. Thinking that they were next door and there was nothing that could be done, we tried to ignore them. Out of curiosity one day, we decided to look in our back yard and look what we found!


Two little kittens, left all alone in the big bad world..... how cute!


Well, in a word, no. These kittens are not very cute at all. They are down-right mean. It seems they have adjusted all too quickly to the world, skipped the cute stage and gone straight to looking after themselves.

Life can be harsh.

The photos show us trying, in vain, to reach out to them.

No such thing as a comfort zone here.

We had our church's 34th anniversary last Sunday. And since it is quite natural for Filipinos to get up on stage and sing whenever they get a chance, someone in our church thought we might like to do the same. Let's just say that we were not exactly looking forward to our time on stage!
The day came, we had practised singing our song with each other but not our accompanist. Hmmm, this might turn out to be interesting.

We had asked the lady who would be playing the piano for us if she was going to be ok to do it. I guess we should realise by now that Filipinos really don't like to say 'no' so she say "Yes, yes, it will be fine."

Our time finally comes and we get up on stage, only to look down and see someone totally new behind the piano with our original accompanist looking on!

Lara and I glance at each other nervously, knowing there's no way to back out now. In the end, it turned out well, even though I'm pretty sure the music was being played by sight - quite impressive....

Some people there even mentioned that they want us to sing again. But maybe they were just being polite...... :)