Hey Everyone,

We just got back from Western Samoa tonight.  This past 10 days have been amazing,  Western Samoa is so beautiful and we had a lot of fun.  Pretty much there is too much to even write on here so if you want to know about it you will be forced to ask me, but just a preview, we had our retreat with the high schoolers about purity and AIDs prevention, sleeping outside at Nu'u's house, vacation at boomerang creek, some sweet waterfalls that Mike and I jumped off of over a ledge with jagged rocks that Trevor almost fell off of, kyaking in the ocean, and Mike and I build a sweet sand castle that looked like a Mayan temple, but we built it really close to the water so after about 45 minutes it was completely underwater.  So that's a preview, if you want to know more then ask.  Unfortuantely i was not able to go surfing in Western Samoa as planned, but another team from Long Beach is here and one of the guys surfs so apparantly we are going out tomorrow at 5:30 in the morning.  Hopefully I dont die on the coral. 

I hope you all have been having a wonderful weekend, and may God bless you all this week!

Hey everyone,

This might be my last post for the next 10 days unless we go to an internet cafe in Upolu.  But this is probably unlikely but check in every once in a while just in case.  This is our last day at the camp and this morning we got to gether with the kids and talked and sang for a while.  In a little while we are going to go down and they are going to present us with gifts and sing and dance for us.  We are looking forward to it very much.  We are so sad to leave the kids and will miss them very much.  We leave this afternoon for Western Samoa and we are looking forward to it.  We love you all and miss you all very much, thank you for your prayers, God Bless you all!

Hey everyone

Sorry about keeping ou all in the dark the this past week.  We had a great time over the weekend, we hiked up to one of the waterfalls and swam around under it for a while on Saturday.  It was a blast, after we went and rented Top Gun.  Sunday we had the option of which church we wanted to go to so we went back to the community church we had gone to one the second Sunday, it was our favorite of the ones we had been to.  We spent the rest of the day just relaxing. 

Monday kicked off our last week of school.  Mike and i let the other team members have a chance to teach the Bible class while we took over their classes.  Melyndee and Nadene taught on Monday and Shanna taught on Tuesday.  Mike and I were back for today which was the last day of class.  It is sad that it was our last day.  We passed out autograph book so we could leave some notes for the kids and they could for each other.  Then after lunch we prepared for the ceremony tonight, it was more of a show for the parents.  We sang some songs for them and then Mike and I and the boys did the Sasa which is a slap dance that incorperates our daily activities.  Then we performed a couple of the line dances that we had taught them.  The parents really enjoyed that part.  Then the girls performed a traditional Samoan dance, and then we all went up and danced to a song by Jeremy Camp.  The whole thing was very interesting, i guess it is a Samoan custom that when you do a show and the people are entertained that they go up as your performing and throw money to you.  It was kind of awkward as the audience is walking in between everyone dropping money.  It was a very fun night, and afterwasrd we took a bunch of pictures with the kids and got to play with them and we did somemore line dancing for fun.  It is so sad that this was our last night with the kids.  We are going to miss them so much.  We will get to see a couple of them again when we come back from Western Samoa. 

We leave for Western Samoa tomorrow at 3:00, and going to the island of Upolu and will be staying close to Apia for the weekend as we work with Pastor Nu'u and the high school group teaching on purity and AIDs prevention.  Please pray for this because we do not know for sure what we will actually be doing. 

I am very sad to have learned of Duane Jacobs, my prayers and love go out to the family, I am very sad that I will not be back in the states to attend the memorial service.  I was also sad to have learned that the day before that Bethany Rehrer from the Master's College along with her family save her brother, died in a car accident in Texas.  Please keep the families of these two people in your thoughts and prayers.  Thank you so much for your prayers.  God bless you all! 

Hey

Friday again, the weeks are just flying by, once again we had skits with the kids as we do each friday and then Mike and I worked with them on their line dances which they are going to perform for their parents next week during the program they are going to put on.  The dancing was intense today, it was so hot, Mike and I were deffiantley struggling.  After that was lunch and then the kids went home.  The people from the marine and wildlife place then came and picked us up and we went down the road a little bit to a really nice reef to snorkel.  They asked Trixie to come but she couldnt which was too bad, I wouldnt have minded seeing her again.  It was a lot of fun out there, we saw a couple sea turtles and a ton of beautiful fish and coral.  Mike picked up a shell that is extremely poisonous and kills divers who pick it up, but the people with us knocked it out of his hand.  I guess the creature inside has a very poisonous harpoon that it shoots out of the end when you pick it up, luckily Mike didnt pick it up on that side, he just thought it was a hermit crab.  After that we came back to the school to relax and we found the cat attacking a coconut crab, so we of course caught it and we are going to use it as bait, I guess the fish go crazy over coconut crab, so we are going to give it a shot.  We didnt do anything after that except hang out in the computer room in the a/c.  Tomorrow they decided that breakfast is at 7:00 so im thinking im not going to eat breakfast since that is earlier than it is during the week and we are so exhausted.  So hpoefully I will be able to sleep in a little while.  Have a greta weekend everyone!

Hi everyone,

Today was another fun day.  After classes we went down for lunch and then prepared for the program tonight to welcome the parents.  Everything was traditional Samoan from the food to the ceremony.  Everything was cooked in the traditional Samoan way.  We learned how to cook using hot rocks and palm branches, how to husk, crack and scrape coconuts, skin taro roots, peel their bananas (these are not like the ones in the states), and weave baskets and other things out of the palm branches.  It was a lot of fun, but i got bit about 15 more times today by the mosquitos, they were everywhere.  After that we relaxed until it was time for the ceremony.  Faatui invited a few people to come and speak at it, they spoke about child abuse and perserving the family and such, it was very good.  The guest speakers as with us were the "guests of honor" so they seated us at the ends and presented us gifts in the traditional Samoan manner as some of the kids gave speaches in the formal royal dialect.  After that the kids served us and their parents,  there was so much food, we were stuffed again.  It is also tradition that everyone who comes brings food also, so we had more than we could handle, and they kept bringing us more and more.  Afterwords the parents went home and we sang with the kids for a while and then sent them off to bed.  It is my turn to sleep with the kids tonight, but they are all tired so I think I lights out will be a little early tonight. 

I cannot believe that we have already been here for three weeks, the time has been flying by and we only have one more week of camp left, and we leave next Thursday for Western Samoa, where we will be working with a High School group of about 150 and the theme is purity and AIDs prevention, that will be fun/awkward ahah.  We are supposed to perform skits for them, so we arent quite sure what we are going to do for that, but the Lord will guide us.  Please comtinue to pray for us as we wrap up camp and head for Western Samoa, we are going to miss the kids a ton, we are having so much fun with them. 

Tomorrow after the kids go home, the people from the marine and wildlife center are going to take us out snorkeling for a couple hours which will be a lot of fun, they also were going to take us deep sea fishing next weekend, but unfortunatley we had to turn them down because we will be in Western Samoa then, hopefully we can work out another time to go.  Well I hope you all are having a wonderful week and God bless you all!