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My Mom is here and we are loving it. We are getting spoiled by her love, taking us out to eat, bringing us treats from the States. This is the third year in a row that she has visited us. I hope she comes again next year.

Today we celebrated Eric's eleventh birthday. He got a huge Star Wars Lego set: Then we went to his favorite rib place in Iloilo: Eric said the best gift of all was the fact that his Lola, my mom, arrived today for a week long visit. Happy Birthday Eric! I can't believe you are eleven.

While the internship began on the 13th of January, officially week one ended today. It has been a very full week and a half, with classes in the morning, and the interns doing language learning in the afternoons. Honestly, I have not been this busy in a long time. And you never feel qualified for this kind of thing. I feel a huge sense of responsibility with Calvary International trusting us with this project, and also Christ for the Nations Institute trusting us with their students. Thankfully this is a team effort. The entire Calvary team is taking on this internship, and we are blessed to have Calvary's Vice-President of Field Ministries, Tim (and later his wife, Nancy) Lovelace here showing us how to do this. The team of interns are doing great. I am impressed that they are always on time for classes and events. They have truly unified into a solid team. I fully expect this to be a life-changing ten weeks--myself being the one who will change the most.

This has been quite the trip. At first the interns were almost not allowed on their American Airlines flight (when they left the States). AA was interpreting Filipino immigration law incorrectly, and they were insisting that they needed a return ticket out of the Philippines within twenty-one days of their arrival. Thankfully the folk at Calvary headquarters straightened things out so they were able to get on their flight. Then last night I got an email from them, they are stuck in Tokyo! They had a medical emergency on their flight and they had to return to their point of origin. So they missed their connecting flight to Manila. So now they are scheduled to fly to Manila today, arriving at 1:30p. Thankfully our flight to Iloilo is not until 4:00p. One intern, Rod, arrived last night at 6:00p. He was coming from Canada. We have enjoyed hanging out in the big town. Hopefully we can find a Starbucks before we have to go to the airport. Prayerfully there will be no more hiccups.

Waaaaaay back in the Summer of 2004 , before we left for the Philippines, we completed the Timothy Internship Program in Guatemala. In order for us to be full time missionaries with Calvary International we completed a missionary internship to show us what full time missionary life would be like. In June of 2004 our family (then just the four of us) left for Guatemala for the Timothy Internship. We got back in August of 2004 and then left for the Philippines a few weeks later. We are now having our own internship here in Iloilo. We will have eight interns living and serving with us here. Six are from Christ from the Nations Institute. Chris and I have been asked to serve as the directors of this program. We have been spending the passed several months making the many preparations for this endeavor. We are very excited about the next eleven weeks. We are very excited to have these eight interns here to minister, learn, and most of all grow. This will be a team effort. All the Calvary ...