we found a new church,its nice and it has air conditioning.but i know thats not what counts,its the people and whats being preached that counts.and from what ive heard so far,he speaks the truth.
andrew and nida sheets mintal,davao,philippines
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewbsheets1/NewChurch

happy belated thanks giving

we had our own american/ philippino thanksgiving thursday on our front lawn.it was a great time,great people,and great food.youre going to hear that a lot becuase its just true.
that british looking guy in the green shirt,is a british neighbor of ours that we have just met.they are a great couple that have retired here in the philippines.so if youre looking for a cheap place to retire where they actualy speak english,then this is the place.the exchange rate is 48 pesos to one dollar right now.you almost cant beat that any where in the world right now.
so come on down half way around the world and come visit,but be careful you mite like it.
andrew and nida sheets, mintal ,davao ,philippines
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewbsheets1/ThanksgivingParty

kens birthday party last nite

we had a great time at kens birthday party last night.he said he hasn't celebrated his birthdays since he was a kid,but the Filipino way is to always celebrate something.especially birthdays,and of course its another excuse to eat and socialize,and of course sing karaoke.
ken is from Tennessee,hes the one with the birthday cake,and that is his newly married bride Ella.we met ken at an expat meeting,there a great couple.ken is here working on his papers for his wife to go to the USA,hes a Christian,and he is a cabinet maker.
the other guy is James,hes our neighbor in the back of our neighborhood.hes from Texas,we have known them for about a year now.he is also a christian,and was in the military.he has been married for a while now.that is his wife marge sitting next to him.she is a teacher at a good university here.they are also both good people.
and as you can see there are working on having there first baby,and working on paperwork for marge and the baby to go to the USA in the future.
we also met Ella's daughter and her boyfriend,i got to see of the few 4 wheel drive land cruisers in our area,very nice.makes me miss my jeep i used to have.
well that's enough for now on that,till the next one.
Andrew and Nida sheets Mintal,Davao,Philippines.
http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewbsheets1/KensBdayParty#

wana b technical missionaries

From kano party

My name is Andrew B. Sheets and my wife name is Nida. We are living in Davao City, Philippines. We are here working on fixing my wife paperwork with the US government, as most of you know the US government has clamped down on immigration since the 911 incident, because many of the hijackers abused the system.
what unfortunately happened is a Filipino friend of my wife had a company filing paperwork for Filipinos, he said he would file ours for free as a wedding gift. We didnt know what was needed so we said go ahead. Well we unfortunately came to find out to late at our interview, that he filed the totally wrong paperwork, and we have to go back to the Philippines to refile.
So we did what our government told us to do, we sold everything in America and moved to the Philippines, and this time hired a real immigration lawyer. Who charged us double the normal amount to file the paperwork we needed to file, because it was a hard case, so we agreed. But half way through refiling our lawyer informed us that she did'nt know the full details of our case and was now not sure if she could get us back.
we did tell her the full truth before she took the case, so this was a lie. And now she said she might be on the banned list. We will find out how long she will be banned in our up coming interview in Manila, it could be 3 yrs to 5 yrs to 10 yrs, we don't know. If its 3 yrs, that's fine, we already have a year and one half done, so we could do another year and a half. Thats not a problem.
But if longer, we don't know. If longer, we have talked about going to Canada, at least that' s near my family in Michigan, but now that the world economy is bad, we don't know if that's possible. I I am a jack of all trades, electrician, plumber, machinist and computer freak. And a lot of those are gone.
Especially in America, here in the Philippines i cant legally work, and what they pay the electricians and plumbers is not worth it, 300 pesos and or 6 bucks a day. Two people cannot live on that. We already are trying to live filipino, we drive a motorcycle, we rent a house for 3500 pesos and or 73 bucks a month. We have airconditioner just in the bedroom, we have phone and internet to keep in touch with the family and the lawyer. We also eatfilipino food, not American food which is expensive and then lastly we pay 1500 pesos a month for visa extensions.
so we are shooting for a monthly budget of 20000 pesos a month and or 416 bucks a month.
You might ask why is'nt Nida working, well she told me that even before we got here shes to old. I didnt understand what she meant until i got here. But she was right, they only hire young college girls. She said that why when a Filipino gets a good job they usually keep it for life and she did used to have a good job, she used to work as a book keeper for the Southern Baptist Convention for 14 years. But she quit that when she came to America and they now have a new book keeper of course, because its been 3 years since she's been there.
When we first got here we looked into many little businesses, small grocery store or small eatery but the failure rate is extremely high.
So when our family in the USA heard that it was'nt that easy to make money in this third world country. They asked the whole family if they could each put a little in the pot to help out here, till we can make it back and we have absolutely appreciated that. and yes we do have some money from the sale of the house, but a large part is to pay the lawyer and yes we are trying to save most of that money for going back to America and restarting, which as you know is expensive.

we both have a long history of Baptist church in our family lines, so that is what we are doing here, we have many friends at many churches and of course have a large family here. We have no know kids, but her sisters and brothers do approximately 30 in the whole family all together so that also keeps us busy visiting them and helping them when we can.

So this is where i get to the wanna be technical missionary. As i told you i am a computer freak. I have 12 years of dealing with computers and the internet. I know how to build them, fix them and do the pictures cd's, video conversion,meaning the camcorder to dvd and of course we have the internet here, so we post the pictures and the video for them. We also do video chat and voice with the family back in the USA, american and Filipino. Her brother is there with his Filipino wife who is a nurse. When the family comes to visit we basically have a small internet cafe going for them.

We are the only one that have internet in the family line, so we are helping with that.
since we are being helped back in America, we are trying to help here. The Filipino here is charging a lot of money, so we help with all of the computer things i have listed, as an example to reformat the computer is 500 pesos plus, that is almost 2 days pay. To build the computer is 1000 pesos plus that is almost a weeks pay, the video conversion to dvd is 500 plus almost 2 days pay.

While we are being helped from the family back in America i am charging nothing or almost nothing, meaning just the cost of the dvd, 30 pesos. Or feed me if you can, i love Filipino food .How can i charge when it is so poor here, i will post the links to the pictures over the year and a half you will be shocked at some of the places we've been, there are people living in nipa huts.Not that there' s anything wrong with that, many here are happy just having that and enough food to eat.but coming from my country, i was shocked and almost cried my first day here because i was in such shock, that at this day of age it still is so poor and behind here still.

Literally there are like 10 years behind on many things, many are still very computer illiterate. So that is why the Filipino service techs are making so much money off the Filipino, because they have know idea about why there computer is screwing up and a lot of times there computer is fine, and they tell them they need a new one keep the old one and sell it and or the parts for profit. I know there are good and bad people everywhere, but there is a lot shady stuff going on here with the computer stuff. The virus attacks here are extremely bad, so many computers are screwed up and need help. People are loosing a lot of very important files because they are so infected.

So that' s where i come in, i will help try to save the files, reformat the computer and get good virus software on the computer and talk to them about different ways they should back up there important data. Many here still don't even have a cd burner or a dvd burner, or internet to back up there files.
what they do have are the usb memory sticks, but that is exactly how they are spreading the computer virus everywhere, even though they don't have the internet.I checked a usb stick that had a 100 virus infected files, we could hardly save any of his work. His business was computer graphics and he is very good. He is using a 500 megahrtz computer, 200 megs of ram, 20 gigabyte hard drive, windows xp. As you know this is way behind the rest of the world,but he still gets it done. If you need some work done, i recommend him, he can do it at a very affordable price, let me know if youre interested.

so that is our story, i will start this blog to let our readers know how were trying to help and if our readers can help us ta all that would also be appreciated.

So here is the links to our pictures, it will give you more of an idea who we are and what we are dealing with and trying to help.

http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewbsheets

http://picasaweb.google.com/andrewbsheets1

thank you for reading our blog
Andrew and Nida Sheets, Mintal, Davao, Philippines
the wanna be technical missionaries