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