oh yeah....

and something else that happened last month....HUGE fire across the street. Sad day. Super scary.


Fire fighters in flip flops. Only in the Philippines...


Praise the Lord no one was hurt, and the fire was put out quickly before reaching our house and the clinic.

Please pray for the families who no longer have a home and are still trying to pull their lives back together.

And she's back!

Yes! This MIA writer for Siblings United has returned to the blogging hemisphere after triumphantly conquering a 3 week monster of an assignment--76 pages (reformatted down from 102 pages) of agonized over information--just some of the complications possible in labor and how to manage them. Oh pain. But oh so interesting. I love my job :)



Aaaaand....we FINished Anatomy and Physiology and are now taking Analytical Writing...definitely starting to feel like I'm on the homestretch.


This past month was just the usual:

More babies

More happy families

Neonatal resuscitation...gotta save those babies!

A Filipino/American wedding

A closer look at the lovely balut (no WONDER they only sell these things at night when it's dark :P )


And of course, God is good. He never ceases to amaze me.

Have you not know? Have you not heard?The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. he gives power to the faint, and to Him who has no might He increases strength.

Isaiah 40:28-29

Two of my favorite siblings

September

A little bit of September...

Textbooks, textbooks, and....textbooks

When we get bored of assignment and textbooks...

Semester exam....we weren't nervous...oh no, not in the least. *ahem*

Trying to sleep on a slow night shift

Lots and lots of paperwork and charting

Teaching Dads how to give a baby bath...hehe.

My continuity, Dayday (also known as Norie). Delivering her baby was definitely a highlight of September. Dayday was born with extremity deformities, so she has no hands and only one leg, but she is one of the sweetest women I have ever met. And her baby was a perfectly beautiful baby girl.

You can imagine how thrilled she and her husband were! Such an answer to prayer.

She let me name her baby--Rachel Noelle. Rachel: after an awesome sister of mine =). And Noelle: a mix of Dayday's real name, Norie and her husband's name, Emmanuelle.

Going home after a Dayday's birth--2:30am

Dayday--3 days postpartum

Another continuity this month, Gina, had a lot of complications and had to deliver in the hospital. Everything went well though, and I was able to visit her a few times in the hospital. She and her baby are home and doing well now.

5:30am cross channel swim with people from church and girls from Mercy Maternity.

fun fun.....

Until one of the girls was stung by a jellyfish :( Super painful...but she's ok now. And it's true, vinegar works wonders.

Celebrating a birthday :)

On shift, double baby duty

Ginhawa Lang

September has been a whirlwind of assignment, studying, semester exam, new class of girls, birth room shifts, prenatals, continuities, etc. The cat aptly pictures how I feel. :) I often find myself thinking "Ginhawa lang--Just breath. Just get through the next step". Today is the first day in awhile that I've been able to sit back. And, although I love busyness, I find that I don't always take the time to "Be still and know that [He is] God." To remember that He is the one giving me the breath that is carrying me through each day.

Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: 'I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind...'

Isaiah 42:5-7

SO.....ginhawa lang.

Bearly Escaped

If you ever happen to run across a bear, you can either run away or climb a tree or roll up in a ball and pretend that you're dead (like any good survival book would tell you to do) or... you could chase IT up a tree. At least that's what my three younger siblings, Isaac, Benjamin, and Hannah did. This bear got lucky... If it had been next week...
It would have been bear hunting season...

And he'd have been dinner.

Picture of the Week

They're heeeere.....and they're great! Class of 2010

Samal and Talikud Islands

Last Saturday morning, I got off night shift, changed out of my scrubs, joined a few of the other students and a missionary couple visiting from Sudan, and spent the day on outreach to some other islands. We traveled by jeepney, bus, motorcycle, foot, ferry, and motor boat to get there; did checkups and prenatals; and had a great time. :)

Hiking down to the ocean

Our boat to another island

On our way there, the water was smooth, but on our way back, it was much more choppy and the boat was rather scary and tippable

Checkups

This little guy wasn't feeling so great and had a really high fever

Our lunch: fish, crab soup, soy sauce, rice, and fresh seaweed

The beach next to their village

Huge clams. When we poked them, they instantly clamped down with so much force, they sprayed water into the air...

....the Filipinos warned us to not step in them, or they would cut our feet horribly when they clamped down.

On our hike out, we stopped at this lovely toilet. I hit my head on the roof and knocked an ants' nest of hundreds of ants and little ant maggot babies onto my head....I nearly had a heart attack. :P lol

On the ferry back to Davao City

Bigger and Better

Twenty-one feet tall... obviously not tall enough. Besides, the main posts were getting a little wobbly, so it was time for a change. The old zipline needed replaced...

Now towering 34 feet above the ground, the new tripod zipline spans more than 300 feet.

In construction


Part of the construction crew

And in operation