Well, she finally arrived; Dakota is here!!

I arrived in the Philippines, safe and sound at 10:30 PM Sunday January 1, 2006 (9:30 AM on the 1st your time). I waited until 4:30 AM on the 2nd (3:30 PM your time on the 1st) to fly to my Vangie’s home town.
When she picked me up from the airport, she told me that the mother of our baby went to the hospital 30 minutes prior to my arrival and was in labor. It was almost as if the baby knew, somehow, that daddy was on his way! (her words, my thoughts).

We went home and showered and changed clothes much needed after 36 hours of travel! We headed to the hospital. We were there from 7:30 AM until present and the baby was born less than 1 hour ago. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the newest addition to the Townley family!! For more images, please go to Dakota’s home on the web, http://www.vanran.net/dakota.

Click on picture for bigger version!

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Hey everyone!

This is just an official announcement that Vangie has become a citizen as of December 8, 2005!

She received her passport later the same day, and left for the Philippines the day after that!

Here’s the actual photo:

We are very excited — next up — DAKOTA TO BE BORN SOON!

Randy & Vangie Townley

Hello –

It has been a while since I last updated. My life has been a whirlwind! In the past few weeks, so many things have been happening, It’ll be easier to put it in bullet points!!

• Have been re-financing the 2nd mortgage for more improvements to the home
• Have been rounding up contractors to get us bids on what it would cost to do the work
• Have been interviewing like mad to find another job
• Have been doing a lot of volunteer work for the church
• Have been spending a lot of time developing some web pages
• Have been spending a lot of time at work, including the commute!

Day Four and things are still great. I’m not getting as much rest as I’d like to have, but I’m having a great time. Today we didn’t do as much sightseeing, but my wife did do one of her most favorite things, SHOP! Here are some of the pictures commemorating this event:

Vangie’s sister Ging-Ging got in on the action too — and bought a doll as big as her!

This is the third day that I’ve been here in the Philippines. Every day seems better than the one before.

Today, we spent out time visiting a couple of really excellent historical sites! First, we visited Fort Santiago, a very historical place

Fuerza de Santiago is a defence fortress built for Spanish conquistador, Miguel López de Legazpi. The fort is part of the structures of the walled city of Intramuros, in Manila, Philippines.

The location of this site was also once the palace and kingdom of Rajah Suliman, chieftain of Manila. It was destroyed by the conquistadors upon arriving in 1570-71, incountering several bloody battles with the Muslims and indigenous Tagalog peoples. The Spaniards destroyed the native settlements and erected Fuerza de Santiago in 1571.

The first fort was made out of log structures and earth. It was destroyed in 1574 by invaders of ethnic Chinese pirates who laid seige on the area. The Spaniards eventually drove them out and in 1589 the fort was constructed by hard stone and finished in 1592. It became the main fort for travels and spice trade to the Americas and Europe for 333 years. The famous Manila Galleon trade to Acapulco, Mexico started sailing from Fuerza de Santiago.

The fort is shielded by 22 metres high walls, with a thickness of 8 metres and an entrance measuring 40 metres high. It is located at the mouth of the Pasig River and it was once the premier defence fortress of the Spanish Government in the Philippines. It was heavily damaged during the Battle of Manila in February 1945 and was restored by the Intramuros Administration during 1980’s. This days the fort is made into a museum which houses well preserved legacies of the Spanish Government, Jose Rizal (which is called the Plaza de Armas), Rizal Shrine, and the Prison dungeons for criminals used by the Spanish Officials.

Jose Rizal, the country’s national hero was imprisoned here before his execution in 1896.

Well, our second day in the Philippines is complete. We were able to do a little bit of sightseeing, but the biggest and most meaningful adventure of the day was when we were able to visit the children whom me and my wife sponsor from Compassion International. Compassion is an organization who, by way of child sponsorship, are

Releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name

In response to the Great Commission, Compassion International exists as an advocate for children, to release them from their spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty and enable them to become responsible and fulfilled Christian adults.

Here are a few pictures of our meeting with the kids this morning:

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My first day back to the Philippines in more than a year has so far been a wonderful trip. Seeing my wife’s immediate family here, and seeing them happy, has been pretty awesome. We started off the day today by having some breakfast at the hotel. Once we were satisfied, we left via a service for Tagaytay, PI.

We left the hotel around 8:30 am and arrived in Tagaytay around 10:00 AM — and that’s on a Sunday with no traffic! We had a pretty easy trip as we were in a very nice van with lots of A/C!!

This first picture, is a picture of the Taal Volcano, it’s considered one of the most dangerous active volcanoes in the world!!

Taal Volcano is located on the island Luzon, south of the Philippines’ captial Manila. It has been selected as one of 15 Decade Volcanoes. There is currently no Taal-homepage by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology’s (PHIVOLCS), hence this is only an unofficial home-page (PhiVolcs’ “blessing” is indicated by a link from the PhiVolcs-www-page to this site). Aside from information on Taal, this site provides information on and translations of 19th century work of German/Austrain scientists travelling the Philippines and exerpts from the famous work of Fr. Saderra Maso, who summarized the pre-1911 activity on the basis of historical (”hard-to-get-to”) accounts.

Over the next few weeks, you’ll begin seeing the new content and a new variety and special features of our homepage. If you want to access the old site, please feel free to click here.

Thanks for watching us as we share our life with you!

Randy & Vangie Townley