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Howdy!
Things have been moving along swimmingly for us here in the humid city of Cebu. After the end of Session 7 of classes and the immersion of Maam Floreda Sumayo we jumped straight into Session 8 and the last round of classes for 2013. Clint taught a seminar on whether Christians should participate in wars or not. I didn't get to listen to all of it, but it is a topic which not many people think seriously enough about. He went through the Old and New Testaments, comparing what God said about war in both places and applying it to us today. We had several new students pop in and join our seminar, who later enrolled in classes with us. Session 8 started on November 4th and we offered all our regular classes. We also tried something a little new. Usually our classes run in the evenings, but this session we scheduled a class in the morning and in the early afternoon in addition to our evening classes. Although no one enrolled in the afternoon slot, we had one student join the morning class. Her name is Samantha Orbiso, and she is the sister of the classmate of one of our sisters Gaddiel Puzon. She goes to night high school but wanted to take classes, so mornings worked best for her. She had to drop out though because her mother needed her to take care of her younger brother. Hopefully this session we will get her back.
Graduation for Session 8 was held on December 14th. This was also the last day of our Saturday Kids' classes for 2013, so we had a party! We like to have games and give presents to the kids at the end of the year, so that's what we did this year. I think we had 28 kids for our last day! The kids enjoy our year end party so much that we have to make sure we don't announce it so that they don't invite every kid in the neighborhood and bring over 100 kids to join! That would be fun, but we don't have the manpower to manage such a number :) Right after we finished with the kids we sent them off and started preparing for graduation. We had several graduates, including four students of Gia Puzon and her father Ronaldo who had a special schedule class with them at their home. We had a lot of fun :).
The next week began our Christmas break, but the first week was not really the break we all had been looking for. We had a lot of renovation which we needed to do at the BSC, including painting walls, tiling a floor, cleaning EVERYTHING! We spent the first week of break working on the BSC, then on Saturday we had an end of the year party with all the church members where we shared a pot luck meal at the newly renovated center (even though renovations weren't quite finished). Right after that we went to a local carnival where we walked around enjoying the lights, rides, and fellowship. The next week was really a break week. The Murrells, Robinsteins, and RJ all got together at Rach and Clint's for Christmas dinner. We also spent a lot of time sleeping, lounging around the house, and visiting with other church members and going on a hike in the mountains. The following week we took a short trip to Negros Island to visit the Emperado's. All in all I had an amazing vacation :).
But, all good things must come to an end, though in my situation it is not such a painful end. Today (January 6) we went back to work! We have a little cleaning to do and some advertising before RJ teaches our next seminar on the topic of Bible study. Thanks to the new year and new year's resolutions we think we will have a pretty good turn out. We start on Wednesday night at 6-8PM and run every night at the same time until Friday night. Session 1 of 2014 (that still sounds so weird!) starts on Monday, January 13. Please keep us, our students, our teachers, and all our members in your prayers. We have great hopes for this new year and look forward to what the Lord will bring. God bless!
In him,
Sara Murrell :)