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On Wednesday, February 5 Mitch and I flew to Tacloban, Leyte, to see Paul Varberg. Paul is a missionary with Converge BGC, and he has been doing relief work in that beleagured city for the past three months. It was three months ago that super typhoon Haiyan ravaged Tacloban, killing thousands and destroying or damaging many, if not most, of the houses.

After three months, much of the city is still in ruins. Most homes still have no electricity, as the power poles and lines are still down. Many businesses have not re-opened. Tents given by the United Nations have been set up all over the city for the homeless. Some families are trying to repair their roofs, but others don't have the money to buy the materials. In some cases, the needed materials are not available to buy. Whole communities were wiped out by the typhoon, swept away by the storm surge that noone saw coming. For Mitch and me, the destruction in Tacloban is hard to comprehend. Mitch commented to Paul Varberg that, if the storm had been just a few miles south, Cebu City would be like this.

It was encouraging to see Paul Varberg in action, and witness his concern for the people in his church who lost so much. CSC decided to partner with him in helping rebuild homes, from the donations that came to us for relief work. Our generous and faithful supporters have been able to contribute more than $15,000 to help Paul reach out to these families with wood, nails, roofing materials, cement blocks and cement. He is a man of integrity and it is a privilege to partner with him.

Here are some pictures from Tacloban.

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J-O-Y!

Mar. 13, 2013By: Lindsay Hoeft

Loving life....and more specifically....hackysacks!  :)

Thank you to our visitors for giving every kid their very own hackysack---as you can see, they were eagerly received!

SRA Day!

Mar. 10, 2013By: Tammy Vosika

Last Friday was SRA Day at school!  SRA is our reading curriculum so it includes reading, writing, and spelling!  We spent the morning having some fun reviewing things the kids had learned in SRA throughout the year.  It started off with one student from each level sharing why they like SRA.  Then we had a cheer competition.  The children were divided into four groups and each group had 10 minutes to create their own cheer about SRA or reading.  It was cool to see what they came up with!  

After the cheering competition was the spelling contest!  The kids took turns writing letters or words on the white board as a review of things they had learned.  They also drew pictures that related to some of the themes our classes had studied.  Some of the older kids went up and explained how their pictures related to the theme.  

DSC01818The final part of the program involved several presentations by our kids.  The Level A students performed sang "The Alphabet Song".  Jaime and Pretchy each did a beautiful job sharing poems about reading!  Shiela & Rowena sang a duet of "America the Beautiful", a song they learned in one of their reading units.  Then three of our Level C students shared stories they had written during class.   

Here are some more pictures from our exciting day!

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Friends

Mar. 9, 2013By: Paul Healy

Friendships are an important part of life at CSC. Although most of our children have siblings at CSC (about two thirds), they all seek out friends in their age group and enjoy hanging out, playing, making music and talking about life. Our kids can easily find friends who have similar backgrounds and can understand and accept what they have gone through in life. Some friendships can go on for several years, depending on how long the children stay at CSC. When a child leaves for adoption there are often sad friends left behind who wonder if they'll ever see them again. In some cases, friendships that began at CSC can pick up later on when children are placed in the same geographical area. Check out a few pictures of friends at CSC:

 

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Movie Night

Mar. 8, 2013By: Bjork Ostrom

One of the things we often hear at CSC is laughter, and one of the best places to hear it is during a movie night.

It's hard to organize a trip to the movie theater, so often times staff will gather up a group of kids and setup the projector in the library at the school. The movie night below was a "girl's night out" that Teacher Lindsay organized. However, being the IT guy, I was allowed to attend because I had to setup the screen and projector. :)

The movie was Mr. Popper's Penguins.

It's hard to see much in the video below, but it's really fun to listen to the laughter of the kids.

The Littlest Waveboarder

Mar. 7, 2013By: Lindsay Ostrom

Waveboarding is the cool thing to do during playtime here at CSC. Lots of the older kids got waveboards for Christmas, but recently more and more of the little kids want to try the waveboards as well. The other day I noticed this little lady trying out her older sister's waveboard in the driveway and I couldn't stop laughing - it was so cute! And she's so good at it!