Staff Blog
One of the values that guides CSC is especially important to me. We need to be thankful people. And we need to express that thanks. It starts with hearts of thanksgiving to God, the Giver of all gifts. Even though we may thank Him regularly in personal or family prayers, it is important to be intentional about group times of thanksgiving, like staff or team meetings or through corporate prayers at church or small groups. At CSC we need to unify our thinking around thankfulness, because, without God's provision, our efforts are just not enough.
But we also need to be thankful to those around us. At CSC, we need to continually express our thanks to those who support us financially and through prayers. In many ways, this kind of thankfulness is an organizational lifestyle. Every gift should be acknowledged and in a timely manner. The personal touch is important; we should send personal notes with receipts. We are even working on sending occasional thank you notes from the staff in Cebu, when possible. Every form of thanks is important and beneficial because, without the provision of our friends, the efforts of the staff are just not enough.
Here in Cebu, we are aware of the need to teach thankfulness to our CSC 
children. Although they have had difficulties in their lives, God has been good to bring them to CSC and to give them a second chance at family. People give sacrificially to help provide for their care. Aunties and staff show them kindness. The food is good and plentiful. Their medical needs are met. They have a great school to attend with loving and talented teachers. And many of them will eventually go to an adoptive family that will open their homes and lives to them. We need to help build a foundation of thankfulness for their lives that will help them understand their debt of gratitude to God, CSC and their adoptive families. I wish you could join our kids for their nightly prayers with their houseparents or a staff member. They almost always remember to thank God for our dear supporters, as they should. The kids know that it takes a lot of money to keep CSC going and to allow them to live in a healthy and comfortable way. And they know where it comes from.
Thank you for visiting our site and for reading this blog. Thanks for your interest in CSC and for the gifts and prayers that you might be willing to offer to help us love and care for these children. Thank you so much!
J-O-Y!
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!
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SRA Day!
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.
The 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
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
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.
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The Littlest Waveboarder
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!
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