Kirsten

It’s been quite a while since we last wrote. I hope you accept our apologies for that. As most of you already know it’s been a pretty intense few weeks. Along with all the bad, there have been some pretty wonderful things that happened around here. First of all it was Alex’s BURFDAY!!! YAY!!! He’s an old man now and I can say that because I’m still a young pup till tomorrow, which is kind of unfair since we’re a day ahead here. It’s like I got cheated out of an entire day of my life. But what can you do? For Alex’s burfday we had a burfay breakfast as well as going out later in the evening with everyone. That was while everyone was still here and I’m pretty grateful that we all got to share that night and relax for a bit before all of this happened.

For anyone who might be reading our blog and who hasn’t heard yet, I guess I should tell you all that’s happened here. It’s hard to really know what to say though. On November 19, Kirsten Wolcott, our second grade teacher and friend, went missing. After a search by the students, her body was found a short way from the school. That whole day it rained so hard we were drenched as soon as we stepped outside. As cheesy as it sounds, my kids told me God was crying and I kind of like thinking of that. The stress and incredible emotions from all this cause three of the girls to go back home for the year so our family out here has been left a little empty.

For a short time, we all had the immense luck or privilege, or honor or whatever to all live here in something close to paradise. For a second, it felt like we had all come close to something like perfect. You can feel it in the air on your skin it’s as if our bodies know this is what life is supposed to feel like. I swear the colors are more vivid and in the evenings the sun glows so bright it feels like its setting right off the end of the world just out of sight.

From everything we keep hearing from Kirsten’s parents and from others, she felt the same way about being here. She was happy and all we can say after everything is that we’re pretty happy just to have gotten to be here for a little while with her.

This is Alex now. I can think of one thing for sure to add to this post. That is, thank you so much for being there (and even here) for us! More than you can know, we appreciate all of your emails, your calls, your letters and packages, and even the visits (Linda)! All these things, they kept us strong, held our broken insides together. The blanket of support from our friends, family, school, and even people we don’t even know is amazing. Again, thank you all so much for your support. We love you all and think you are all stellar. Like the baboon.

We're back and better than ever Super Bloggers Sterling and Alex

Oh man it’s been a long time since we wrote to everyone. We’re so sorry about that. It’s been pretty darn busy here. Both Alex and I have actually sat down numerous times with intentions of finishing a blog but something always comes up that required the attention of SUPER TEACHER!!!!!

I thought we’d do something a little different for the beginning of this blog. So I will now proceed to interview Alex.

SS: Hi Alex!
AH: (no reply)…. Good day, Sterling.
SS: Well you’re certainly looking good this afternoon.
AH: Why thank you, Sterling. I haven’t showered all day, and my hair is growing unchecked.
SS: Yes. You certainly have that “rugged Man” look going on. I have a few questions from the good people back home. Would you be a doll and answer them for us?
AH: Sure thing. Shoot.
SS: Well first of all Mrs. Hirata writes from Concord California asking why you haven’t written in so long.
AH: Well, Sterling. I wrote two days ago, and called her yesterday. Maybe that’s why. I want to know why she’s moved to Concord.
SS: Ah well it’s good to see you’re keeping in contact with the people back home. How heavily does that play a part in your day to day performance as a person and more importantly as a teacher?
AH: Well, support from home keeps me on my feet. I get good ideas and great motivation from the people back home. It plays a big part, to answer your question.
SS: Alrighty. I’ll go back to the letters. Ms. Mary Lou 19 from lovely Louisville Kentucky asks, “Please tell me who the real Alex Hirata is. What’s he like? What does he think out there living in such foreign conditions? And more importantly… will you marry me?
AH: He’s pretty much an okay, alright dude. To answer your second question, he thinks pretty much the same thoughts he thinks at home; he’s just in a new location, thinking them. But here they are. We work hard, we smell bad, we have fun. I miss people back home, but I know I’ll miss people here when I leave. It’s a sword with two edges. Also known as a double-edged sword. But I don’t feel as if I can never win. I’m having a good time, and I’m trying not to get too stuck on home. I want to make the most of my time here, so I don’t dwell too much on home. Who needs those people, anyway?
SS: Wow gentle readers I hope you appreciate what we have just read. We were just given a small look through a window into the mind of a genius and possibly the most important person of the twentieth century. Oh wait he has just informed me that it is now the twenty-first century. Hm… well why don’t you tell them all a little bit about what’s been going on here.
AH. Since the last time we posted, school has resumed. We’ve gone through three and a half weeks of teaching and testing since our three week H1N1 break. Sterling and I were caught off guard when we were surprise-informed that our kids had to take exams, each of which is worth forty percent of their grade. These exams marked the end of first quarter. Also, grades 1-5 are practicing for a Christmas program at the end of this new quarter. That should be fun. Sterling preached last Sabbath, filling in for the pastor, away for an important meeting. What about you? How come you get to ask all of the questions? My turn. Where are you right now, emotionally, physically, otherwise?
SS: hm… well the reason I got to ask all the questions is that I’m taller than you and therefore superior because I am closer to heaven. Also this is my computer. But I digest. I’ll answer physically first since that’s the easiest. At the moment I am sitting next to you at the table in our apartment living room. Our apartment is on the school campus and almost right next door to Alex’s classroom. My class however is on the other side of the campus and takes me about 5 minutes to walk to. This walk is why I am in much better shape than Alex. It’s cool because when it rains, which is does every other day (and not just little rain, I’m talking buckets and buckets of rain. If it were raining cats and dogs they’d drown before landing. That’s how hard it rains) I forgot why I was telling you that. Something about how I get soaked walking back to the apartment. Hm… emotionally, I’m doing pretty well. In the evenings I get to walk outside and look up at the sky. The sunsets here burn the clouds and the whole sky lights up in pinks and orange and red. This is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world and God has allowed me to spend a year here. I miss home but I miss the people more than anything. I don’t think I’d want to go back right now but I’d love if everyone was able to come here. There’s just something amazing about this island. So yeah… um otherwise… I’m pretty full. We just ate lunch and that’s usually the effect lunch has on someone… does that answer your question? Oh by the way Alex you forgot to answer Ms. Mary Lou’s last question and I think that was a very important and sincere one.
AH: Of course, of course. I have a return question. No? So Sterling, how have the last couple weeks been, schedule-wise? That was a terribly worded question. What have you been up to lately? Have you been busy, bored, what? I’m sure the readers are dying to know.
SS: Hm… well it’s very difficult and time consuming being this good looking. I spend about 4 hours a day in front of the mirror. That takes up most of my grading time so I don’t grade. Also sometimes it interferes with the silly schedule the school has set up for my teaching. So sometimes I bring a mirror into the class room and just stand in front of it for hours while the students are required to sit quietly at their desks doing nothing at all. NO NO NO I’m just kidding! Haha I can see I cracked you up Alex. For all the readers back home Alex is on the floor laughing because I am side splittingly funny and witty. Yes and very very humble. Well to answer the question. Last week was very hard for me. I lost my voice because I was pretty sick. That’s never very good for a teacher. So I taught very quietly for 4 days while my voice healed. The whole time I was praying that it would come back before Saturday which was when I was scheduled to speak for church. I also was trying to prepare my sermon which was on Love since love seems to be the main point of all that we do in life and the center of following God. After that, my time was taken writing exams which I was very afraid of my kids failing. But I think they did moderately fine… Alex tell us about your recent open water dive!
AH: To finish up a scuba certification class, some of the other SM’s and I had to do a final open water dive. Since Jan, the abominable dive-man, was taking us outside of the reef, Sterling and Katherine (two already-certified divers) opted to come with us. I refer to Sterling in the third person, even though he’s sitting right next to me. Back to the story. Jan, who is a super-stellar Belgian dude, boated us all the way across the island and outside of the reef. We all fell into the water and dived. Scuba dived. In the water. It was pretty cool, except the water was actually warm. So perhaps I need to use a new adjective. It was the ‘bees knees.’ Anyway, we saw sharks and fish and coral and water and other things you’d expect to see. It was fun just being underwater, actually. You could probably put me in an ocean-sized pool with some scuba gear, and I’d have the time of my life just being there. Your turn again, Sterling. Would you mind enlightening us on what you do for recreation?
SS: Well Alex I noticed that you failed to mention the part where you scuba dove right on top of my head with your super heavy metal scuba diver tank. Yeah well the bump on my head hasn’t forgotten and neither has Jesus. No I’m just kidding it wasn’t Alex’s fault. As for recreation, I enjoy long walks on the beach. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to go to any of the beached because they’re all private. So I have to settle for chasing chickens through the jungle armed with an air soft gun. Alex comes too. We also enjoy climbing coconut trees and stealing coconuts from them. We try to play basketball sometimes but we’re really really terrible at it. My sixth graders destroy me. If I wasn’t so tall I’d look like a complete fool. We used to ride bikes but then they broke and I’ve been trying to repair them but no one has parts for them. Oh and the reason Alex called Jan (pronounced Yon) the abominable dive-man is that he has lots of chest hair which is something Alex and I are very lacking in. I asked Alex to get us some chest hair growing tips from Jan but he was scared. I can understand why. A man with a plethora of chest hair can be quite intimidating. So Alex is there anything else you’d like to say before we leave this interview to do teacher stuff like grading and forgetting to grade?
AH: Indeed, good sir. I would like to thank—profusely—all of the people back home who send us packages and emails and other tangible forms of love. I feel like the only reason I’m floating is because of them. I’m struggling to teach and manage my class right now, but others always seem to lend me their strength. Thanks much for that. Also, I’d like to apologize for not keeping up with my contacts. I’ve been very lax in my communications recently. I’m trying to pick it up, so please bear with me. My last thought. Lean on God. Many people are going through problems, loss of friends and family, stresses with jobs, and other matters. Lean on people and lean on God. He saved me from terrible digestive problems after consuming too many onions with Sterling’s delicious homemade chili a few days ago. If He can do this for me, He can do anything. Again, thanks. As for Sterling. Are there any words he would like to impart to his fellow fellows back home?
SS: Yes. Sterling would love to say some stuff.
Um… Like Alex said I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who’s thinking of us and praying for us and writing to us and sending stuff to us and doing nice things for us and all those awesome things. I can’t express how much it means to both of us. It can get pretty lonely out here and yet we constantly get reminded that there’s people who care about us and love us.
Speaking of love. I’d like all of you to go to your bibles and read 1 Corinthians 13. It may be your hundredth time reading or it may be your first but I think its super awesome. But don’t read it in a King James Bible. It just sounds silly in that thing using charity instead of love. I guess the British way back in King James time didn’t know how to love. But anyway, read through it. Both Alex and I have done worships on it lately and I like how Alex said that God is love so when you read through Corinthians and you see what love is like, you see the face of God. To me this is the meaning of everything we do and the basis of God’s relationship with us. It’s all about Love.

Now Alex and I wanted to sing you a song but you can’t sing over a blog… so anyway we’re writing you a song from the wonderful prophets from so many years ago. The Beatles. Who once said, All you need is love. Haha that was a super corny ending. SWEET! HOLLA! Bye bye

Lizards, Manliness, and the Advent of Christ

Since Sterling and I are so long in between updates, I decided to put up mini 'lessons' that I learn here. This is for those of you who are exasperated with our seeming lack of interest in sharing our island experiences. Hopefully, these 'lessons' will be enough for you in between posts. I've been studying my Bible a lot lately, and this message sort of jumped into my arms. With nothing better to do with it, I'm passing it along. The message? God is coming soon.

A week ago Saturday, during youth Sabbath school under the Koyeng at the church, a little egg fell from the sky and hit the ground, the product of shoddy nest-making and the call of gravity. Random. As Katherine, whose heart was once tied to being a veterinary doctor, dissected the small embryo that was once in a shell, we discovered it used to be a premature lizard. Or rather, it still was, as evidenced by its beating heart.

My being not-too-phased about this development was not the product of a manly man's calloused heart. Rather, it was the product of a boy whose body and heart aren't manly. Let me explain. Doubtless, all of you have seen a lizard before. You know how they can look extremely pretty or be as drab as a toenail. Well you also know how they do push-ups, seemingly randomly. A scientist, or perhaps an elementary teacher, would wonder, 'Why do lizards do push-ups, seemingly randomly?' I instead wonder, 'Why can these lizards do more push-ups than I can, seemingly randomly?' Each of these lizards, in all their abundance, can do more push-ups than I can. These insignificant reptiles, of which I could casually peel off of a hot asphalt road, or see in the maw of a proud cat, can do more push-ups than I can. It doesn't help that they do the push-ups naked on hot rocks under the sun. What is that all about?

Fast forward to last Friday, when I opened the back door to be greeted by an egg falling from the sky onto the ground in front of me. Random. Still in an early-morning stupor, it took me a while to compute this simple fact. 'This can't be another lizard egg ... unless we have komodo dragons here ... look, it has a purple stamp ... it's obviously a chicken egg ... why are the chickens constructing nests above our door?' At last, I think to look up. There, an elaborate system of strings and meticulously-folded notecards told me that this was not like the time when the lizard egg fell. No, this was intentional. The girls had tried to play a prank on us. Lucky for me, I move slowly in the morning and avoided both walking under the falling egg and making the other egg fall.

As I stated earlier. God is coming soon. This no new revelation, but true nonetheless. The Bible also informs us that He will come unexpectedly. 'Like a thief in the night.' It might not be in our lifetime, but it is still true that no one knows the day or hour when God and a host of angels will descend on the Earth, so we need to be ready regardless.

Christ will come when we least expect it, at random. Much like a thief in the night. Or perhaps an egg falling from the sky.

Herro!!!!

So Alex got to write the last little blog… I guess that means it’s MY TURN!!!

Well, as he told you, we’re about to start up school again. Everyone here is super excited… For the last few weeks we haven’t had any teaching to do! It’s driving us crazy! Alex started having withdrawal seizures. I had to stuff a sock in his mouth so that he didn’t bite off his own tongue. I kept trying to tell him he couldn’t teach without a tongue but he never listens.

Since not teaching was starting to cause so much trouble here, Alex, Seth and I decided it was time to take action. (DISCLAIMER: the following is not true… I’m not sure why we decided to write it.)Donning bandanas and machetes, we smeared our faces in mud and in the middle of the night crept to the hospital. Easily evading the robot guards we hopped the barb wire fence. As soon as we got inside, Alex activated our invisibility cloaks and we snuck around until we came to a room full of evil doctor/scientists! It was terrifying! They were all singing and laughing about how their evil plot to ruin education had succeeded. About this time I’d had enough! We rushed them and at machete point forced them to publically admit that the swine flu scare is only a super secret conspiracy to ruin world education so that aliens from Mars can come and invade. As soon as this announcement was made, President Obama appeared and congratulated us. He even gave us medals. He’s a sweet guy. He then declared all the schools open!!! YAY!!! WE CAN TEACH!

In other news, we killed three rats! Oh and the cat killed another. I think the cat was having a bad day because the night before the rat killings we brought her in to be fixed. The island was having an animal cruelty day and to celebrate they decided to fix all the cats and dogs…FOR FREE!! We jumped at the chance to get revenge on the cat for all the times she scratches us. Alex and I drove down and deposited our cat Sigmund; yes she is a girl with a boy’s name, at the vets. She’s called Sigmund because she’s nuts. It was pretty sad because I saw my student Leah at the vet. She was having all four of her dogs fixed and had a few tears in her eyes… Anyway, our cat made it out ok and the next day to work out all her frustration she caught a nice big baby rat. We caught three in traps. They were in our kitchen! The night before, we were watching a movie and the rats started running in a kitchen right in front of us! We chased them out with machetes and butter knives. Haha. They decided to come back but we were prepared! We had traps!

Yesterday was Sabbath here. Whenever we go to church, the SMs are in charge of a large part of the program. This varies from taking up offering to special music to scripture reading. Anything they need, we’re the go to people. After church we thought it would be awesome to visit some of the nearby villages. There are a few villages by our school which are for people from outer islands. There’s a certain amount of prejudice against them because they’re not “native Yapese.” We decided to go up there and play some songs for the kids and pray with people. When we got to the village it wasn’t much, just shacks made of tin and lots of dogs. We talked to one of the leaders in the village to ask if we could go door to door. The culture is a bit different here and you need to have permission to do almost anything. He said that recently things had changed a bit and he would have to ask the newly assembled community board if it was alright. So we didn’t get to go yesterday. We did play one song for them and prayed. Their special prayer request was for Steve who’s in the hospital with cancer. They told us here on Yap cancer is dangerous. I know it’s dangerous everywhere but there’s not much treatment for it here. So if you’d keep Steve in your prayers it would be greatly appreciated.

Other than that, the only other really amazing thing we did was go spear fishing! We caught like a hundred fish!... no that’s a lie we only got 5… and they were smaller than a dollar bill… Stupid fish look huge when you’re swimming next to them. But it really was a lot of fun. We went at night on a raft. We had a big bamboo pole to push us out. The night was beautiful. All the stars were out and there were no lights on land. We pushed out about a mile. The whole time we could hear fish jumping around us. They have these big flying fish here that are attracted to light. They’ve been known to jump right into a fisherman and spear him right through. We could hear them jumping all around our boat. When we slipped into the water we couldn’t see a thing. Everything other than our flashlight beams was just black. It was pretty scary. About two hours later we only had the four fish and we could see lightning flashes in the distance so we decided to call it a night. Still it was pretty amazing.

Oh I forgot to tell you. Perhaps some of you were at the Pleasant Hill chapel when Alex and I got to call in on skype and talk for a bit. Well we wanted to share out little miracle story about that. To make the 9:00 worship we woke up at two in the morning here and when we went to get online, nothing was working. All our calls to the school immediately dropped. We decided the only thing we could do was say a little prayer. We prayed and our next call went though without a flaw!! We had an awesome time talking to the school and to Pastor Chris about what we get to do out here. As soon as the call was over, I tried to quickly check my email but the internet immediately stopped working! Like I said we’re very glad that God helped us get to talk with the school and we miss you all.

Thank you again for everything all of you are doing for us. Your prayers and support mean a ton. Take care and we’ll try to post some new stuff as soon as we have teaching stories!

Finally, another post

Hey, this is Alex. Sterling and I are finally posting on our blog.

Answering the school's prayers, a new family has come to live with us in our five-star apartments! From India, a family of four has come to help us out. The father will be our much-needed accountant, the mother (might be) running our as-of-now never-opened cafeteria, and one of the children will be enrolled in Kindergarten! This is a blessing, as everyone, especially Principal Fonseka and his wife are overworked. To top it all off, another family and an individual have arrived this morning (I believe. Much of the time we don't know exactly what's going on). We haven't seen them yet, as they arrived in the wee hours of our pre-dawn slumber and are most likely sleeping right now, but we are blessed and joyed to have them on the team! Forget what I said about not meeting the new staff. I just met them. They seem pretty cool, and I was greeted with an invitation to spearfishing this Thursday ...

Taking advantage of the three week H1N1-preventative respite from school, Kirsten, Kristen, and I have been working towards our SCUBA certifications. At the local's discount rate--quite a deal-- we have been going into town after work to lolligag in the pool at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel. After three of those training sessions, we loaded our 'action hero' gear onto a boat and headed out to a body of water in which we couldn't stand up in. Our first dives! They were pretty sweet. We didn't go to any spectacular sites, since we were only supposed to 'get the feel' of it, but I still saw plenty of life. Our last two dives were supposed to take place today (Sunday), but they were cancelled due to an overbooking of dives at the hotel. It's just as well, though, since I'm sick and need to rest up for school tomorrow.

Yes, that's right. School resumes tomorrow! All of us are excited to see our kids again. None of us can wait to wake up super early, stand up for six hours, and then grade papers and prepare the next day's lessons until darkness falls! I kid. We really are super stoked. The last three weeks have been alright, with manual labor in the morning and free time to cool off and shower in the evening, but I want to teach! At the time of writing, I have almost finished my lesson planning for the week. Although we are set back due to the three week mandatory closing of school, I have some fun projects and lessons planned! We can't wait.

Let me tell you of the productive things we HAVE done this break. As I alluded to in the last paragraph, we have been working in the mornings during break. Most of our work has been in campus aesthetics. Living on an island in which the jungle thrives, this means cutting down the jungle. Entrusted with a weedeater each, Sterling and I are the youngest SM's with the heaviest tools. Our engines coughing up black air, we were assigned to go ahead of everyone else and everything head height and below. Sterling even switched out his plastic line and attached a saw blade to his weedwacker. I'm sure Tim 'The Tool Man' Taylor would smile if he heard that. Our other big assignment involved big rusting barrels full of tar. You know something is messy when you have to wash your hands and feet with gasoline to get it off.

Other, smaller things, we accomplished were homely. We bought a container to keep our food safe from them rodents. We killed three of them rodents (big suckers they were, too!) with all-metal, razor toothed, rat traps from hell. We did some other things, but I don't want to bore you.

The rat traps remind me of something else! When we first bought them, my hand got sticky for some reason. The stupid rat traps had cut my finger without me even knowing it! Later, when I first set them, they got my other hand! Now I have a half-inch mar through my left thumbprint. It took over a week for that gash to close up. Yes, there is a point to all of this banter. It has something to do with first aid kits, but I don't quite know how to phrase it. I guess what I want to say is 'Thank you' to my mom for ensuring that a first aid kit arrived in Yap with me. I have already used a bunch of band-aids-- excuse me, bandages to cover up those cuts that stay open for a while. Dirt gets everywhere here. I had this one infected cut in my knee that was packed full of dirt. I was, like, 'What the heck, man? Why are you so full of dirt?' Later, I saw that the black dirt was joined by some whitish liquid, and that the cut and the area around it were hard ... Luckily, it's better now. Or so I hope. Now all that's left is a nifty three-dimensional monument to remind me of the pain that a boiling-water compress can give to an infected knee cut. As I was writing this paragraph, I couldn't help but glance at my sad little toe. Right now, it's bleeding through my bandage through a dime-sized absence of skin. What was the point of all of this, again? Oh, right! My first aid kit has been very useful this last month.

Which is a semi-decent segue into our next topic. Sterling and I have been here for over a month now. I'm pretty decently confidently mostly sure that we could not have done this without all of you. We want to thank you, profusely (that's a vocab word), for all of your support and emails and packages. You all have been stellar. It's not always easy here, and contact--difficult as it is sometimes-- with people back home has lifted us and carried us through this month. As school starts, and we tumble into the pants of Mr. Alex and Captain Spence, we will need your love and care all the more. We appreciate you support and we love you all! Thanks so much!

Every Saturday night, at the end of AY, the SM's and church youth all stand in a circle and hold hands. In this ritual, we sing a song together before praying and heading out. I want to leave you with the song, as I enjoy every time that we do this.

I don't remember all of it, but I think I remember the chorus:

Meet me in heaven

we'll sing songs together

Meet me at the savior's side

I'll meet you in heaven

We'll join hands together

Brothers and sisters I'll be there

Pray that we all will be there

We miss you and are praying for you. God bless you all!

Some call me the space cowboy Others call me the gangster of love

Well hello there friends. This be Sterling and Alex jammin on the keyboard, typin' you a lovely little blog. We've been on Yap for about two and a half weeks now. Not much time but it sure does feel like longer. So much has happened. This is actually our first post for the blog. The earlier one was an email that we sent out before the blog was up so this is FRESH OFF THE PRESSES FINGER LICKIN' GOOD!

This is Sterling writing. I think the most important thing to tell you all about is that school is closed down! The government shut us down for three weeks to try and stop the spread of the N1H1 i mean H1N1 virus. I actually didn't know what that was until my class told me because I'm not a scientist but apparently my class is. So H1N1 is actually science slang for SWINE FLU!!!

So we taught for a sum total of one week before we were shut down. I miss my class. In the mean time we've been doing maintenance, being lazy, and killing big bugs. I'll pass the computer over to Alex and let him lay some knowledge on you.

This is Alex speaking. Typing. So if school is out for three weeks, what've we lads been up to? Well let me learn you.

The most exciting slice of adventure has been our dear Parma. You know that we taught a whole week of school, but did you know that it was pouring that whole week? Well I'm telling you now. It was raining like mad our first (and only) week of teaching. Being the very perceptive survivors that we are, we took notice of the water. If California got all of the rain we got in that week, it would be green all year. One night, us SM's (student missionaries) were in the school library watching a movie when Anna bursts in with a pack on her back and tells us to "Pack all your valuables and come back to the library. We're spending the night here because a typhoon is headed our way." So we ended up spending the night in the admin building, deemed the safest building due to it alone surviving the last bad typhoon ... Oh dear! Luckily, we had Sterling. With a guitar, he strummed softly, sang sweetly, and soothed the scared souls of the silly SM's. It turns out the most intense part of the night was the rat and hand-sized spider. The typhoon never hit us. Indeed, it was headed straight toward us, but curved around under us before continuing its path. It was kind of like one of those fake 'arrow through the head' rigs that you wear during Halloween. It turns out that this was quite a miracle, as the tropical depression-turned-tropical storm-turned typhoon kicked mother nature in the face and went against its governing laws to go around us instead of decimating us.

Back to Sterling!

So I hope you're not losing interest yet because there's more. "REALLY STERLING! How much more?!!" Oh so much more! So go take intermission. Grab a bathroom break. Stand up! Stretch! Ok here we go

We've been cleaning up the school and our apartment in our free time. A few days ago I hopped on the roof of my class and fixed a leak!!! I am FIXER MAN! Its a very manly name. We also bought machetes and have been climbing up the big coconut trees.We're like monkeys with knives! Today we found a couple bikes and fixed them up. They're pretty cool! Other than that we've been trying to find adventure wherever we can. I've been writing songs and soon will be recording some stuff on equipment I brought. Alex has been reading a lot and hopes to soon be the first SM ever to win the much sought after, prestigious busy beaver book club reader extraordinaire award.

A couple days ago I thought I'd be very efficient and get up off the couch to do some chores. I got a big can of raid and sprayed all the cracks and holes in our kitchen to make sure no creepy crawly things were creeping and crawling all over our food and dishes(because that's the definition of cleaning up teenage boys). A few minutes afterward, THE BIGGEST MOST EVIL LOOKING CREATURE came spazzing out from under our fridge! It had jaws like a shark and the strength of 100 tarantulas! It was a giant centipede as long as my forearm and about a half inch wide. They're poisonous. I immediately decided to kill it because thats what TV and movies tell me that men do. MEN KILL THINGS. I called Seth, our other roommate, to let him see the monster. He is much easier to frighten than I am and while I kept my cool calm composure, he grabbed two cans of RAID. While Dual Wielding the cans, he sprayed the centipede right in the face! It died... we left it on the floor overnight because that's what men do. That night a had a dream about it getting up from its raid induced coma and coming back for its bloody revenge. In the morning it was gone! My best guess is a rat got it but perhaps soon you'll be reading the story of the vengeful Centipede. That is if we survive to tell the tale. Oh two more facts. Our rats are bigger than our cats. Second fact, the morning after spraying the raid we found 13 dead roaches in our kitchen. Oh and here's an extra fact. We found an octopus spider in our room yesterday. They're about as big as my palm. We took it outside and I chopped it in half with a machete. Don't tell PETA. I just really really hate those spiders.

Alex here. You may be thinking we're violent, bloodthirsty creatures after telling you about our animal slayings(actually it is more like self-defense), but we're quite the pair of pacifists. Our couple dozen knives and machetes are simply the result of good, wholesome Pathfinder upbringing.

It may seem like we are busy bees all the time, but there is leisure time too. One Sunday, pretty much everyone on campus piled into a van and car and we headed out on an adventure. Just driving on the roads here is exciting, as we have to constantly slow down and swerve to dodge planet-sized potholes and sleeping dogs. Principal Fonseka took us out to a beach for a lovely picnic and snorkel. We jumped right in. We were in the water for about an hour and some, maybe three-fourths of a mile out, when it started to rain. In less than a minute, we lost water and air visibility. It was so intense, we couldn't see the island! Only four of us were out there, so we stuck together like glue so we wouldn't get lost. Except we didn't stick together like glue because glue would be washed off in the water. But we did stick together. So, fending off sharks and pirhanas with our bare (more like 'bear') hands, Sterling and I led the other two snorkelers (funny word, no?) back to safety. If we were in the Navy, we would've been awarded medals for our stellar performance in this situation.

Oh. We saw some pretty fish and coral and stuff too.

Before I give up the keyboard, I want to say thank you to everyone who is emailing us, praying for us, thinking of us, or saying that they are doing any of the above. Also, extra thanks for the packages, and to the people who send an email every day (or four emails a day- you know who you are). You have no idea how much your support means to us.

I want to leave you all with something else. As a teacher and student simultaneously, I need constant guidance and direction. Two verses have really helped me out with both the teaching burden and alone-ness aspect of this mission.

Exodus 4:11,12- "The Lord said to him, 'Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and teach you what to say.'"

James 1:5- "If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him."

These verses have been my two 'legs' thus far. Thanks to Mrs. McMillan for the second one, thanks to those who send me verses, and another thanks to everyone else for your help and love. Love you all!

So Sterling again. I wanted to second alex's thanks. It really does mean so much to us when we get to hear from you. We miss everyone a ton and its your prayers and support that have kept us going.

There's a book called Is that Really You God? by a guy named Loren Cunningham. He started YWAM (Youth With a Mission). He believes very strongly that each and every person has a calling. A message from God to direct them in their lives. He says that its a calling that, if we have a little faith, we can all hear.

I don't know what my calling is and I'm pretty sure Alex doesn't either. Maybe that's why we're out here. Just trying to find what God wants to say to us. But even though i don't know what it is, reading through the gospels, I'm convinced that each of us truly has that calling. I'm afraid to follow mine, whatever it may be, but I'm determined to face my fear. That's my prayer, to be given the strength to face those fears. I guess I think it should be all of ours. There's a vision of life here on this planet right now that is as beautiful as heaven. Jesus told his disciples to pray that God's kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven, so lets make an effort to see it here on earth. I just think that if we try, we'll hear God's voice and if we can dig deep enough maybe we'll have the courage to follow it and change OUR world. change this place here today. We're looking for a personal relationship with Christ, one that is not centered on a future vision of going to heaven, but one that matters to our everyday lives right now. Our religion is for our lives today. It can change our world here and it can change us. I kind of think that's really what following God comes down to.

So thank you so much for your prayers and support and know that you'll be in ours. Tune in next time to hear the horror of the kinds of food three bachelors living in our apartment make! oh and maybe we'll tell you all about the other SMs and our pets out here. See you then!

First Post

Hey so this is Sterling AND Alex writing! my left hand is on the left side of the computer and Alex's is on the right! well his right hand is on the right.... Let us tell you about what we've been up to. Getting here was hard for me emotionally. The first two days just felt terrible. I was lonelier than I'm ever been in my life. Fortunately its been slowly getting better. Both Alex and I have been reading the bible a lot and praying. I know God can give us the strength to do this. Right now it just seems like a mammoth task. Its your prayers and support that have been keeping us going. Thank you so much for everything that you do. We can't express how important all of it is to us. We're hoping to get a blog up but internet here is expensive. We pay by the megabyte and its slow. So it might take us awhile. also we can't upload pictures because thats a lot of megabytes. Plus we don't have much money. We get 115 every two weeks to eat and buy what we need with. Everything on the island is pretty expensive because it has a long process being shipped here. a small thing of honey is $11! oh hey if you want to write us our address is P.O. box 700 Colonia, Yap FSM 96943 Alex email: breathmintbob@yahoo.com Our apartment is shared with another guy from Walla Walla named Seth Taylor. He's a really good guy. we have a dark apartment with millions of roaches and gekos. Oh and at night the rats run over our heads and eat our food! The whole thing is kind of nice in a strange way. We're on an adventure. We're being men and fixing the place up so that its a little nicer to live in. Its hot so we got fans. Cause thats what men do! Alex is gonna (I don't let my class use that word) write about his class now. Thank you, Sterling. My class, at eighteen students, is one of (if not) the largest. It also happens to be the best. I teach 4th grade, and they really work me. Although we've only taught for three days (at the time this email was written), I find it taxing. My kids are so much fun. They're young and joyful and cute and loved me the first day I walked into the classroom. As the days pass, it gets harder and harder to keep them under control. Making lesson plans and grading is actually fun, though a bit tedious. It's getting harder and harder to wake up, partly because of fatigue (like a 6k run in the rain and heat of Yap!) and partly because we're alone. The thought of my kids is the best motivation I've had in years. Eighteen kids depending on you, looking forward to you, and even needing you is a great thing. It feels good to have a real reason to get up and start the day. Alright, enough of me. I'm passing the mike to Sterling. Thanks Mr. Hirata however, contrary to your belief, My class is the best. Oh and they call me captain which is infinitely cooler that Mr. Alex. I have 10 6th graders. I have a few trouble makers but the class as a whole is being well behaved. I assume this will change as they get used to me but the iron fist of Mr. Spence will keep them under control. My classroom is the worst of the bunch. The windows have no glass and the rain flys in and floods the floor. Also the roof has some holes. But we're doing the best we can to make it nice. We're making posters. I have 1 corinthians 13:13 on one wall and hopefully soon we'll have Isaiah 41:8-20 somewhere... I'm trying to get over my loneliness by putting my energy into my kids. I miss you all so much. k now alex and i will write about what we eat... We eat food. Some coconuts which is cools because we climb a big tree and knock them off like monkeys. I don't think monkeys knock off coconuts but we look like monkeys when we do it. The first day we ate 3 peanutbutter jelly sandwiches and white rice. We've been eating better since then. Soon we'll be fishing. I have a lance spear for spearfishing and we found some others here. Also our room mate seth wants to make some so we'll be working on that. The school here needs teachers!! come help teach! We're missing 5 teahcers. They were supposed to be americans but they didn't come. Americans are easy to get into yap. You don't even need a vista. Then we tried to get some indians and filipinos but its harder to get them into the country and they might not make it. Now the prinicpal is teaching classes all day then going back to the office to be a principal in the evening and then a registrar and the accountant... The teachers are giving all the time they can and working overtime. Please forward this to whoever you think knows us or would be interested. We don't have too many email addresses. We forgot to tell you all we love you!! please please pray for us. We hope to hear from you. oh by the way alex already gave you his email but mine is s.spence@yahoo.com there's some obvious people who have been left off the mailing list because we don't have the emails of some of our best friends. Hopefully this gets around to everyone if you guys would forward it. Thank you so much. You're in our prayers