Sorry it took so long

Alright, I am going to back up about a month or so in order to talk about when my brother-in-law came out to visit us. I had planned on doing this the day that we got hit by Typhoon Ondoy, but got sidetracked and haven't really had the chance to go back and talk about it til now.

Its been so long now, I'm not positive of the dates, but sometime in mid September Daniel's brother, Ryan came out to visit us. I always love it when people are willing to make that absolutely dreadful trip to come spend a few days with us on this side of the world. Anyway, Ryan wasn't really here very long, but he and Daniel managed to pack a ton into a such a short time. Again, it has been so long that I don't necessarily remember the order of events but here are a few picture from his time here.

This is at one of my favorite restaurants. It is a Greek place called Cyma. They have good food and most of it is relatively healthy. Anyway, we took Ryan there for lunch one day and while we were sitting at the table Ryan had his computer out working on it and was trying to find an internet connection. One of the guys that worked at the restaurant stood right behind him and helped him find the best connection...and then continued to stand right behind him with his hand on the back of Ryan's chair looking over his shoulder at the computer for what had to be almost 5 minutes. It was pretty funny to watch how Ryan increasingly became uncomfortable with the guy standing there and how the worker seemed to think nothing of it. One of the things I have learned over the last few years is that the Filipino idea of personal space is much different than ours and they also do not consider it rude to stare either directly at you or in this case whatever it is that you are working on. Ryan handled it well, but it was still pretty funny to watch.

This picture is from Malaybalay. Daniel thought it would be fun to take Ryan outside of Manila and show him how beautiful the Philippines can be and at the same time see the other orphange that is connected with the one we do things with here. This is Daniel and Ryan with two of the Filipinos who help run things in Malaybalay, Donald and Grace. Although, I get jealous of Daniel any time he is able to go the province and I am stuck home in the pollution and congestion of Manila, I was thankful they went without me on this trip. They left very early Friday morning and got back just over 24 hours later on Saturday morning. Both of them were exhausted by the time they got home.



Saturday night, Daniel rounded up a few other missionaries to play with him and Ryan in a ministry game not too far from the Arthur Center. JoAnn and I went along with them to cheer on Daddy and Uncle Ryan. I ended up not seeing much of the game since I spent most of the time making sure JoAnn didn't run off the side of the stage she was playing on and tyring to keep her away from the red ants that were all over the place, but from what I did see the guys seemed to have fun and the crowd enjoyed the game. I didn't get a picture but at half time they were able to share a quick word with the crowd and invite them to church in the morning. The next picture is Ryan right after the game...I don't think he was used to playing in such hot and humid weather and he looked like he might pass out.


It didn't take long for him to regain his composure and brag to the camera about the 41 points he scored in the game though.

The next day we took Ryan to church with us at the Arthur Center and that night Daniel took him to watch Kirk play for Ateneo at the same arena that Ali fought the "Thrilla in Manila" fight at.

All in all, it was a lot of fun to have Ryan out to visit. (Although I said it to him when he was here and I will say it again, I would have very much enjoyed it if he would have brought Heather and/or the kids with him.) JoAnn made quick buddies and loved having Uncle Ryan around.

*************************************************************************************
On a completely unrelated side note I have had a few people ask me if I was showing yet and to put up a picture of my belly. Getting a picture was actually a little more difficult than it probably should have been since we don't have batteries for our digital camera right now and we tried to use our video camera to take the picture, which for some reason doesn't like to focus when taking a still picture. So, after taking 4 or 5 pictures, this is the best we ended up with...

Sorry for the annoyed look on my face and to tell you the truth I feel much larger than I look in this picture.