what describes you.

found this interesting wall thingy from my favorite bakery,  bread talk (i don't know if its painted/drawn or if its a sticker), and it made my night. this is not objective of course but it nice to be reminded that you are an amazing person and that no matter what circumstances were in, there is something beautiful in all of us.

my first 5 words were:

1. pretty

2. happy

3. captivating 

4. faithful and
5. affectionate

what are yours? 

marriage matters (tips from kids)

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night and day out

creating moments that we could remember in the future is the best. bonding time a midst the busyness of our individual lives something that we look forward to. ruby and i had six days of free time last week and we went to panglao to spend it with sister and her husband. they are on final two weeks of construction in their hotel/resort and we want to help out any way we can. and that any-way-we-can turned out to be mopping, dusting, crawling on all fours on the floor, heavy-lifting of furnitures,wiping, sweeping...blah, blah, blah 

(confession: i am making this way harder than it was! hehe) 

in reality though we did some help but we had a good night and morning out. carsten and his brother treat us to a delicious dinner and drinks after.

mango shake @ 11:30pm

moon peeking though the leaves while we're sitting on the beach 

moon later at 1 am

then on the third day we head out to dumaluan beach and strategically planned to just sneak into bohol beach club without actually paying the 500php entrance fee *wink*. we planned to wake up @ 5 in the morning (take note of the word planned please), we woke up 6: 45 am and arrive at around 7 something. great. the sun is finally up and it already hurts the skin when you stay for 5 minutes (it is a wonder to me how white skinned people can stay out in the sun and baked) 

ruby 

les and ruby

what else was left for us to do was walked a little bit and settled in having breakfast.

fried rice and egg and veggies

best gambas i've had in three years! yes. it can only be found here.

old wooden tables

it was low tide... and the beach was calm and quiet with only a few vacationers and not one tourist (foreigners)

this guy right here was a little nuts.while sister were fixing themselves and changing into swimming attire... he kept looking at us and grinning with his missing teeth. funny but sister did not think so. haha.

a nutty guy

strawberrys!!! we don't even have these in cebu!

guard your heart

Proverbs 4:23  Above all else, guard your heart; for out of it are the issues of life.

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too often we are fooled with surface appearances. we thought that if a person looks good and acts well-behaved in church he or she is a true picture of holiness and exemplar christian living. 

a deeper problem is usually not visible with the naked eyes. we may have observed that we are too often very adept in hiding what is the true condition of our heart. we masked it, we hide it well because we don't want others to know that we are weak and we need help. i think this is also because we sometimes see our that problems are the same with what others are undergoing and they seem to be well-equipped and strong enough to overcome it with the sheer power of their will. we are embarrassed to admit that when we face the same problem we do not have the strength (enough) to go through it on our own. so we hide it... we cover it in our laughter, we cover it in more work/ministry, we slap others on the back, we entertain, we encourage but deep inside us we are crumbling; we long for release, we want to cry out, we clamor for help and too often we are too hurting to heal on our own.

we fail to realize that the problem usually runs deeper. when we see people with bad temper or insulting attitude we think, "that man needs to keep his cool',  but unless that man realize that his reall problem is his heart , the motives, the desires, the longing, he could not really "keep his cool". 

too often we get busy with life. we get preoccupied with something else that we are not observant that we have let the ability of our heart to function like it's supposed to, to long and want and desire for the things that is of God.

my heart is wrung-out, tired, achy, numb, and stony. i look forward to God's promise in this verse: 

Ezekeil 36: 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.