Maligayang Pasko! I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and every blessing for the New Year. Thankyou so much for your prayers and support while I have been away, they are so greatly appreciated.

Christmas fever has well and truly hit the Philippines. The festivities actually began last month, but from December 1 things really began to get jolly. The streets are decorated from end to end with giant star shaped lanterns and Christmas lights. The shopping centres have gone wild with massive hanging displays of baubles and an array of sparkly things, not to mention the Christmas trees and dancing Santas.

The Filipino people love to celebrate, and Christmas is the event of the year as far as most are concerned. The party invitations have indeed been plentiful this month. A favorite pastime of the Filipino male at Christmas time is to let numerous firecrackers go off. Now I appreciate good fireworks as much the next person but I draw the line at the ones that forget the pretty colours and just make a loud noise!

This has once again been an eventful, interesting and on occasion turbulent month. In the first week of December we welcomed another member of the Rendora family into the world. The eldest daughter of the people I stay with in Welfareville (the wonderfully kind and hospitable Rendora’s) gave birth to little Joshua and both mother and son are doing very well. Faye (the mother), her husband and baby are all staying at the Welfareville family home and will stay there for another month. Mothers keep working up until about two weeks before they are due and then they only get two months maternity leave.

Joshua is a gorgeous little fellow and I am greatly impressed with how he manages to peacefully slumber through all the sounds of Welfareville. He spends most of the day sleeping in his cot which is placed in the centre of the living/dining and everything room and is a constant hub of activity and relentless noise. The presence of young Joshua in the household has introduced me to the unusual customs and superstitions that surround childbirth in the Philippines. I found out that after having the baby, Filipino mothers don’t bathe for the next 2 weeks to a month. That is in Manila- they tell me that in the provinces they don’t bathe for up to 6 months! The funny thing is that when I inquired about the reason for this they looked at eachother and said "Oh…um…we don’t know, its just tradition"! They also have a tradition that the woman isn’t allowed to do any work that involves getting her hands wet, like washing the dishes or clothes. That doesn’t appear to have a reason either – but I certainly wouldn’t be complaining!

It is hard to believe that I only have four weeks left here in the Philippines, and that 4 months are already behind me. Something I will miss about the Philippines is its unpredictable and often amusing uniqueness. Manila in particular is full of surprises, and things that are just so bizarre its funny. I often find myself looking around and taking everything in- my initial thoughts are noise, dirt and traffic. But then something will catch my eye that makes me laugh and think how quaint this country is.

The other day I was walking down Commonwealth Ave, the incredibly busy 5 lane a side highway on which the OMF Mission Home is located. My head was down to avoid getting dust and pollution in my eyes and also to watch that I didn’t step in roadside scum. But then just at the right moment I looked up to see a group of six pony carts trot past. The carts seated two people and were brightly adorned with a fan-like fluorescent plastic decoration on the back. They weren’t picking up passengers, they weren’t advertising anything and they weren’t transporting anything. I chuckled to myself and thought "Monday afternoon must have just seemed like a great time to trot ponies down a highway".

Another thing that brings a smile to my face everytime I go past it is the very official looking headquarters of the National Coconut Authority. I am so pleased and reassured that someone has authority over all those troublesome Philippine coconuts!

On another occasion this month I was doing some work on my university assignment up in the OMF office. But I spent most of the time engaged in conversation with one of the lovely Filipina office ladies. She showed me the photos of when she, her sons and their friends camped out next to her belated husband’s grave on All Saints Day last month. And yes they actually had tents, plastic chairs and an esky. After looking at the photos she dashed off to make coffee. Filipino’s love sweet things and vast amounts of sugar goes into everything they make, coffee is certainly no exception. Before I could politely decline the beverage she had returned bearing a cup for me (bless her!) I graciously sipped away at the liquid that surely must have a heaped tablespoon of sugar in it!

There are so many other weird and wonderful things I could report but I fear that this newsletter would end up far too long. But before I continue with the events of this month I will leave you with a bumper sticker message that was on a jeepney I caught, it read "God give me patience…RIGHT NOW!" I thought of this sticker when I saw an ambulance with its lights flashing and siren ringing stuck in a one of Manila’s world famous traffic jams. I reckon the paramedics would get there quicker if they got out and ran down the sidewalk pushing the stretcher!

On the 11^th I went back down to the delightful little town of Pili, Oriental Mindoro. I was there for the Pili Youth Group Christmas Party, which was a very fun occasion indeed. Another typhoon had past through recently so the ground was still very muddy and heavy gray clouds hung lowly in the sky. The regular road into Pili was blocked as they were repairing the bridge, so instead we had to take a different and more treacherous route (note: I am making this sound slightly more dramatic than it was, I desperately wanted to use the word ‘treacherous’…). The road was unsealed and a mixture of mud and sand. It was not wide enough for two tricycles to pass eachother so when we ran into oncoming tricyle traffic, our driver panicked and drove into a ditch. Once the other tricycle had passed we had to rectify our situation. Picture this, Stef and the driver pushing the tricycle out of a muddy ditch with a backdrop of banana trees, rice fields, palm covered mountains the peaks of which surrounded by thick clouds. It was definitely worth getting my shoes muddy for.

A few days later Rebecca, Lydia and I headed off for our short holiday to the island of Boracay. This tiny island is in the Visayas region in the middle of the Philippine islands. And while it is only 9kms long and 1km wide it possesses the most famous beach in the country and is the ultimate tropical paradise. The girls and I cunningly classified this trip as ‘cultural exposure’ to observe and participate the other side to life in the Philippines…it was hard work but someone had to do it. We spent three days swimming in the crystal clear turquoise water, cycling around the island (never to be done again by Stef- it had been many years since I had ridden I bike and ohhh the pain!) and we also went on a snorkeling boat trip. Another element of our ‘cultural exposure’ was to taste the culinary delights of this fine island, which I did with great success.

However, this blissful time on paradise island was horrifically tainted by our absolutely dreadful trip home. There haven’t been many moments that I have honestly feared for my life over the last four months but this was most definitely one of them. Boracay is too small to have a ship port so we had to take a small boat over to the nearby port of Caticlan. To our great annoyance nobody seemed to have a clue what they were doing, whether there would be boats going that day or what time. To cut a long and painful story short we ended up waiting for seven hours at the port for the coastguard and ticket people to do their jobs as slowly as humanly possible.

Finally we set sail onto the roughest sea I could ever imagine. The ship was carrying three buses, seven cars and hundreds of people. We spent the entire 5 hour trip being tossed up and down on the vicious and merciless waves of the open ocean. The boat was letting water in through the giant door where the buses and cars drove in, I could see this happening to my horror as I spent the whole trip downstairs throwing up over the railing and listening to the almighty boom as the waves crashed against the boat. The majority of the other passenger experienced severe ‘railing time’ as well.

I was cold and wet as everytime we were dropped down by a giant wave I watched a great surge of white turbulent water explode around us and splash into the boat. I have never been so scared in my life and find it hard to express the reality of being on that boat. Eventually we made it back to Roxas and staggered onto a bus to take us another 2 hours up to the Calapan Mission Home. Two days later and I still felt like I was on a boat. I can say with absolute certainty that I NEVER EVER want to go on a cruise on anything else but Sydney Harbor.

Thankfully we all returned back to Manila alive and intact and ready to celebrate Christmas Filipino-style. Also, on the 21^st Lydia and I said so long and farewell to our dear friend Rebecca who flew back home to England.

Once again I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and I look forward to catching up with you in January.

• His protection over our lives while we were on the boat from Caticlan.
• His providence by sending the three of us here at the same time to help eachother through our ‘Philippines experience’.
• Wonderful people to share Christmas Day with.
• December has been a very healthy month, no major worries at all.
• The truly excellent people in the Welfareville and Pili communities who have made me feel so welcome.

• That Rebecca has a safe flight back to England and that God continues to do amazing things through her and in her. Pray for her as she settles into life back home and that she can be a witness to friends and work colleagues and share about her experience in the Philippines.

Please pray for my plans for January, I will be doing lots of travelling and saying goodbye to all the people I have met here. I will also be flying down to the island of Cebu to visit my World Vision sponsor child.