Black Eyes and Supposed Cures

Here at Aparri Bible Seminary, I like to participate in Physical Education on Friday afternoons. P.E. here usually amounts to playing basketball for the gentlemen students. Last Friday we played (beginning at 4 PM) some people from outside the seminary for a good half-hour (a game to 20 by 1's and 2's) and then another group of people from outside the seminary wanted to play us the next game. So we played and while we were watching them run all over us, I had a chance to stop a fast break (sort of, it was a 1 on 2) so I forced the guy with the ball into the corner, when he crossed over he dipped his head and we bumped heads. Luckily I got hit right in that little protrusion on the outside corner of the eye socket, so I had a golf ball under my eyelid pretty much instantly. The result was, I can assure you, a black eye in it's fullest glory. As I write this I still have some bruising around my eye, although the swelling is all gone; so you can imagine what it looked like Friday night and Saturday, or even Sunday morning when I was part of an ensemble of young adults that presented the special music for the week at church. Oh, did I mention the offensive player called a foul on me when we bumped heads? True story. I "fouled" a guy and got a black eye. (I later found out the other guy ended up with a black eye too, his just didn't show up until the next day.)

About the only thing funnier than the timing of the black eye was the way the the students here reacted to it. Most of our Filipina students expressed their sincere regret that one of my beautiful eyes could be marred in such a way, even temporarily. Such prognosticating also produced a new taglish (Filipino English) word that I enjoy immensely, "safety-ness" and question's about whether I would continue to play basketball. I assured them I'd been hurt worse playing basketball before, and that I wasn't about to stop playing. Our Filipino students had various reactions to the injury ranging from, "do you want me to foul him sir?" to "it's part of the game sir," to the even more entertaining, "it's very big sir." (This was when my eye was swollen shut, so I had managed to notice.) So a good time was had by all.

As I mentioned in the last post, mid-terms are coming up which means I get to write three tests. I am of course looking forward to such tedious activity. However, it is for a good purpose, and hopefully my students will impress me with their ability to recall the "pearls" that have been dropping from my trap in class.

My friends Travis and Tara Gabbard are in Haiti on a mission trip right now. Please pray for them and their group.

I'm saving the best for last, I promise. This is an example of the kind of things my colleagues here in the office think they can get me to do. You may or may not be aware that breast milk can be used to treat pink eye in infants. I was not aware of this prior to yesterday, but because there is blood in the white of my eye from my injury, it was suggested that I seek out a nursing mother to "bless" me with some milk in my eye and that this would heal my eye. Even though I was skeptical from the beginning this topic was the running joke for the afternoon. Even in "liberated" America I would feel uncomfortable asking something like that, to the point that I would probably have to be in a serious bind (blindness and or death) before I would ask, and maybe not even then. Now imagine you are one of less than 10 white people in a city and everybody knows that you are a part of a seminary. So they weren't going to get me on this one, but we all enjoyed the sheer absurdity of the situation. And then I googled it and found out that breast milk can be used to treat pink eye in infants, so I learned something too. To date the only situation that rivals the one described above was my discussion with the faculty on the meaning and social acceptability of the word "fart" which was punctuated with Sir Rico looking the word up in the dictionary.

I'm having a blast, but I miss home too. Happy Birthday to my Sister! Love you Kayla Joy!

Nick

Merienda

Merienda is the term for "snack" here in the Philippines and I would wager that I hear this word more often than any other word. The day here in the Philippines is structured something like this: Breakfast between 5 and 6 AM, morning merienda 9 AM, coffee break 10:45 AM, Lunch 12 Noon, afternoon merienda 2:30 PM, coffee break 3:45 PM, Supper between 6 and 7 PM, late merienda if up past 9 PM. If anything gets done inbetween these times it is only because the Filipino or Filipina was able to ignore the excruciating hunger pains they were experiencing. And you think I'm joking, and I sort of am joking, but not nearly as much as you think I am. Everytime I settle into something important like writing a sermon, devotion, or lesson I inevitably hear "Merienda!" followed by a sound similar to a herd of buffalo at full speed approximately 5 minutes after I get into a good train of thought. It has become another of our office jokes here, with me always asking "What's that?" whenever I hear the word merienda.

In the "I can't believe that is the case" department is the fact that I've been here more than 2 months now. Also belonging to this department is that midterms will be in a mere 3 weeks.

This week it has been my responsibility to give the messages at our morning (6:45 AM!) devotions. I've been "devoting" out of Luke 12 and I think that it is going pretty well. I began my first devotion Tuesday morning by asking the question, are you a fool? (Luke 12:13-21). This morning I "devoted" the next section vv. 22-34 under the heading, "Don't be a fool." Tomorrow I'll finish by "devoting" the following section vv. 35-48 under the heading "Why you shouldn't be a fool." I've noticed that the word fool seems to catch people's attention pretty well. Use that to your own advantage.

You will be pleased to know that the "very joke" seems to have legs. Many of the students here have picked up on it, and I still find it funny; which means it has some true potential. The best examples from earlier today were that after "devoting" for 20 minutes this morning and then teaching for an hour I was "very thirst." And to paraphrase the end of Romans 5:20, "where sin increased, grace very increased." The jokes that arise from Filipino English are literally endless, like the student who wanted me to cross the street when I went with a group of students to the market: "Here way Sir! Here way!" I try not to laugh at them too much when things like this happen because I don't want to discourage them from their English; but there are times when it's a laugh a minute.

The next time you are feeling uber-spiritual, try to read through Romans and determine which law Paul is talking about everytime he mentions the word "law" without consulting a commentary. I'm using commentaries and it's confusing to me, or as my friends here would say, it is "nosebleed."

Things are going pretty well, please continue to pray for me, and for the students here. Thank you for your time and your concern.

Nick