Whew, We made it through January!

Thank you all for your e-mails and prayers! I feel very loved and privileged to hear from you! I also really enjoying hearing about how are you doing.
I have been feeling like there isn't much to tell you about what is going on here. We have had an extremely busy month in the clinic with lots of malaria and resistant malaria on top of that. We also have had inpatients probably more days than not, definitely every week. We are pretty exhausted at the moment after recovering from being sick. Last week I had gastro (vomiting and you know what else!) and malaria again at the same time! I got so dehydrated, I had to have Danelle give me fluids by IV. Danelle and the graduate nurse Anne also had just been sick previously. I am feeling much better now just tired but thank God He's answered our prayers and gave us a slower week this week to recover. Kent and Leonda George are to return to the Philippines next week but it will probably take them longer to get back here. They will be grocery shopping for us in Puerto for one and have book publishing business in Manila. Unfortunately i have to make this short so I copied and pasted some of my other e-mails to other people with information about here. I also tried attaching some pictures again but no luck. The last few times I have tried but the internet freezes and it just won't work for some reason.

So this past month my greatest blessing was the women's potluck at Danelle's house. We invited all the married women from Nyug, Erisurung and from church. The only ones not able to come were Sunya and Sirlin. Everyone else came! I was so excited because I had gone up the day before and invited everyone but wasn't sure they would come. Even Imit came! There was lots of food and we had a lot of fun! Most importantly they had a blast! They were joking that they were only aunties and had alubs (boyfriends) not husbands!

Yes I can have a conversation in Palawano! We do all our work at the clinic without translators and the people are very helpful to mostly not use too big of words and answer our questions as directly as possible. I still need to learn a lot of “faith” words, like forgiveness and such but its coming along. I really agree, learning to sing in Palawano even though I am not sure of what most of the words exactly mean, is really good for learning the language and pronunciation. So I have enough language to buy and sell, find all about someone's sickness, find out about what people are doing, where they are going, the things they like and most everyday conversation and to pray. I can get the gist of most conversations but still need a lot more work on understanding and learning more words or phrases. I am even trying to memorize scripture in Palawano in Sabbath school. The people don't have the entire bible in Palawano but they have Genesis, Psalms, and the gospels, Revelation and a few other books, mostly from the new testament. Most of the more educated Palawanos that have done high school also know Tagalog so they have the whole bible in Tagalog.

About the Philippines. Well it is made up of so many islands, thousands probably but don't quote me on that. The official language is Tagolog, and I am not really learning any of that. I am learning Palawano which has some similarities to Tagolog. I am starting to be able to read a little Tagolog like when they send prescriptions up to us in Tagolog with our patients. The Philippines is quite americanized so the children's names are also for the most part. There is quite a lot of English spoken in the lowlands but not here. Also the names are not really that much americanized here. Some common male palawano names are Dyun (pronounced June), Dyinie (Jeanie), Durmisu or Dumisi, Dyitu (Jeetu), Abi or Abil, Mendey or Mendia, Nui or Nunuy. Also common Palawano girl names are Dyillan (Jillan), Marilin or Marylin, Bilin or Bilinda, Bisita, Binita, Melini and Dyillet (Jillet). The Palawano alphabet is much shorter than ours. The old Tagalog alphabet was really similar but they since have adopted a larger alphabet much like the american one. So the Palawano alphabet is A, B, K, D, E, G, H, I, L, M, N, Ng, U, P, R, S, T, W, Y. The Ng is a sound we don't have in english and gives everyone a difficult time in learning it. The U replaces the O and K replaces the hard C. No “F” sound in Palawano, they use P instead. So Pebriru for February. They pronounce their R like the spanish R with a roll.

Hope to write again soon. Take care everyone. You are in my thoughts and prayers.