Bible school and more (part 2)
(make sure you read part 1 before you read this)
So we are at Sunday, June 27th and I’m updating this on July 8th. A lot has happened in the time in between there. First off, it was fantastic to have a bed in Sn. Fabian. It did wonders on my back and helped me sleep a lot better. I was very surprised at how primitive the Bible school was. I wasn’t expecting much but at least cell phone signal so I could connect to the internet, but they didn’t even have that. When Darwin left Sunday afternoon and I realized I had zero communication with anyone for 11 days and I was with completely new people that were strangers at that point, it was really difficult. I really struggled for the first couple of days, but God gave me peace and I made it through.
Monday I slept in and rested from the weekend and found out some of my responsibilities for the next 10 or so days. They weren’t what I expected at all, but I’m finding out more and more that that always seems to be the case. You have to enter every situation almost with no expectations at all and it will go much better for you. I struggled a little at first because everything was so different and not at all what I was told it would be like. I eventually adapted and felt better, but it was a difficult process for me. I was under the impression that I would just be living here in the Bible school and teaching the students basic Greek and Hebrew and then on the Sunday I would go to a village in the mountains and preach. Instead, until I asked if I could, I had no plans to teach in the Bible school here and I was supposed to go to a secular college and teach all day Tuesday and leave Thursday for the mountains until Sunday. It was a rough bit of news for me. Plus, I was all alone with brand new people, just passed off to a new set of handlers. The wife of the head guy here is a wonderful woman who acted like my mom the whole time and really helped make me feel comfortable though. The husband, Pastor Ligmayo, is a very quiet and stoic man. I mistook this quietness for rudeness at first because he barely even talked to me. But as time progressed I realized he was just quiet and didn’t really talk very much in the first place.
This Pastor Ligmayo and his wife.
There was also a white British missionary here too. He helped found the Bible school and has been a missionary for almost over 30 years with the last 27 years being specifically in the Philippines. His name was John Warren, or Uncle John as everyone affectionately called him. Uncle John is 79 years old and an incredible man. It was very good for me to have him to talk to and converse with, literally the first person I had spoken to this whole time whose first language was English. He left Monday morning though so I barely had anytime with him. He had a lot to say and I think he enjoyed my company and English as well. He is incredibly fit for a 79 year old and has a wonderful accent that makes him just fun to talk to. He had a lot of wisdom and good things to say, but for the sake of length here and your boredom, I won’t describe it. If you are interested just let me know and I’d be happy to share. I’ll just try to stick with the basics.
I was told I would be teaching Tuesday in a secular college where Pastor Ligmayo’s son, who is an Attorney, teaches a class on the Philippines Constitution and also Business Law. So I’m told I’m filling in and to share my testimony and teach really whatever I want at that point and I need to fill 1 hour every hour from 8-5. Wow. So I prepared to share my testimony and teach a little bit of basic Hebrew, because that is what I was told I would be doing so thats what I prepared. We got to the college Tuesday morning and I was told that instead of hour classes they were 1 and a half hour classes. So I had to do some shifting around and lengthening of teaching and it actually worked out. I adapted and got better as the day went along. I’m not sure how the students felt about learning the ancient Hebrew alphabet, but they were at least happy it wasn’t business law I think. In the hour and a half I shared about myself and my testimony and by the end they were reading basic Hebrew words. I was actually quite proud of myself. It turned out to be a nice little teaching module. so if anyone is interested in learning how to read ancient Hebrew, I can help you out.
This is Sam the stand-in college professor.
It was a long and grueling day and I slept well that night. Like I said earlier, they really didn’t have any plans for me to teach in the Bible school until I asked to do so and they obliged. The Bible school is a comprehensive 10 month program in which they are taught everything that a basic seminary teaches and at the end they are sent into the field for an internship to complete their training. Right now they have 19 students, 12 girls and 7 boys. They vary greatly in age but most of them are from the mountains and have very little formal education at all. As a result they don’t really speak English at all, so I needed a translator. This could have been why they originally didn’t have teaching there, which makes sense I guess, but it worked out anyway. Wednesday morning I taught the same Hebrew lesson from the day before, it was about my 10th time doing it so it came real easily. That night the students have their own chapel service type thing, led by the students. It was incredibly like ekklesia at Huntington, which was really cool. I was asked to preach at it and it was a really good experience. I told them we do something very similar to this and it was neat to travel literally to the other side of the world and see the same thing going on. God transcends cultures and languages and miles, if I learned anything from this trip I learned this.
Thursday I was supposed to go to the mountains with a whole new guy I didn’t know, Pastor Nestor, for 3 days. I was a little nervous about this simply because it was another unknown and it was going to be pretty remote. I didn’t mention that Wednesday morning I had diarrhea and didn’t feel well at all, but as the day progressed I felt a lot better. The same thing happened on Thursday and I really didn’t feel comfortable traveling to a remote mountain village with the runs so we postponed it a day. This is why I didn’t want to travel feeling sick. This is what the toilets look like in the mountains:
You pretty much just squat and aim.
I took some imodium and ended up teaching basic Greek Thursday afternoon to fill the gap in time. Friday morning I woke up and felt fine, no more loose bowels, so after lunch we hopped on a bus and traveled into the mountains. We rode for about an hour and a half and then got off at Pastor Nestor’s church and house (they were connected in one building). They were literally on the side of a mountain. We cooked dinner over a wood fire stove and then prepared to leave for our first destination. On Thursday night we were supposed to go to a Bible study that Nestor teaches in a nearby high school, so we went there on Friday night, but it was very poorly planned. This high school is more like a boarding school and the students stay in a dorm for the week and then leave and go home on the weekend. Well it was Friday night so all of the students went home. So all we had for our Bible study was a mom and her kids and a cousin of the kids. There were 8 people I think with the kids no older than 17. I was a little upset that we traveled all this way and hiked an hour to get there only to find out that there was no one. Well we had the Bible study anyway and it was really good. God really opened my eyes to the passage where Jesus says “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there”, or something along those lines. I didn’t have the best attitude, but as we sang worship songs and they shared their testimonies and prayed, my eyes were opened and I was humbled. It doesn’t matter how many people total are there or how far you travel to get there or whether or not there is electricity (there wasn’t any here), God will still show up. He showed up there and it was wonderful. We had a great time.
These are the kids in the family from the Bible study Friday night.
We stayed overnight there and woke up the next day and I got a tour of the place. I wasn’t able to see anything the night before because we arrived after dark. They showed me the high school and we sat around and played ping pong for a while and waited for breakfast. After we ate breakfast we chatted until the bus came to take us back to Pastor Nestor’s house. We rested for the morning there until a couple local Pastor’s showed up. Nestor wanted me to share my testimony with them, so I did, and then we just sat there because they didn’t really speak English. We ate lunch and then traveled by bus 10 minutes up the road to the next village. It didn’t really make sense, but not a lot does over here to me. Oh well. Once we got there I realized the predicament that I was in. We were at the house of some people that attend his church, however they spoke very very little English. It was 2:30 pm. We didn’t have anything scheduled until the next Bible study at 7 pm. Thats a lot of time to waste in a house with 3 people you can barely communicate with while its raining. It was difficult and incredibly boring but I made it through. We ate dinner then walked to the house the Bible study was being held at.
This is the group that I taught to on Saturday night.
It was a good time again, we sang and then I shared. There were probably about 30 people there.
During the time I was up front talking, a little girl crawled up to her mom in the front row. Now, as you can see there are only two rows and other lining the walls, so its a tiny room. The girl crawled up onto here mom’s lap where the mom promptly lifted up her shirt and began breast feeding the little girl. Right in front of me. While I was sharing my testimony. I couldn’t believe it. Ha. It was actually pretty funny but incredibly distracting at the time. I don’t know if I did but I could have sworn I stuttered for a second. I just didn’t see it coming and then bam, in this tiny room, with only 30 people, not 6 feet away from me, she starts breast feeding.
After that, at night, we made another grueling 1 hour hike literally down hill the whole way to the village I was preaching at the next day. I honestly think going down is more painful than going up. You exert more energy going up hill but I think my muscles are more conditioned for that so its not as painful. Going down and bracing yourself with every single step is torture after a while. My shins were killing me and my quads were burning. We ended up making it to the church and as we entered I didn’t see anywhere there were beds; all I saw were benches that we used as pews. For a second my mind went to worst case scenario and I thought that if I had to sleep on a bench I was going to cry. I was sleep deprived from the last night and very very tired. My worst fears did not come true though as I noticed a door going up some stairs leading to the pastor’s room. There was one bed in there, no mattress again, but it was given to me and I was grateful. It was around 9:45 and I was about to pass out. Instead Pastor Nestor sat down in the room with me and started talking about how he hoped I wouldn’t forget him and how he’ll remember me in all his prayers and he hoped I would too. He talked about me coming back and thanked me for coming and went on and on and it was very heartfelt and I really did appreciate it but I was just about to fall asleep. I felt really bad because all I was doing was nodding pretty much and not really responding at all and about to pass out. Then he suggested we eat and drink something and I had to say no, I was far too tired and needed to sleep. I hope he wasn’t offended but I just didn’t have the energy.
The following morning I woke up and preached in the church. It went well I think. I said goodbye to Pastor Nestor and Pastor Ligmayo’s son met up with me at that point and we rode the bus back to the Bible school after lunch.
This is Pastor Ligmayo’s son and a couple church leaders from where I preached Sunday.
It was an interesting ride. Half way through the ride a man came and sat next to me and introduced himself and started talking to me. No one had every done this before, Filipinos are very shy, so I was very wary at first. I kept my bag close to me, as if he was going to steal something from it or something. I don’t know what I was thinking. He introduced himself and asked about me and then asked if he could share something with me. I thought, “Oh here we go, he’s going to evangelize to me.” And sure enough he did. It turns out he is a missionary in the area and wanted to share the Gospel with me. I stopped him once I realized what exactly he was doing and told him I had actually preached in a church that morning and that I was a Christian. This took him aback and he questioned where I preached and what denomination I was affiliated with. I told him that I was a missionary, not affiliated with a specific denomination and I was just in the country for a couple of months touring around. I was a little offended that he questioned me like he did, almost as if he didn’t believe me. I put my headphones in and he ended up moving away. Every time the bus stops there is a shuffle of people as some get on and some get off. After one such shuffle a girl ended up sitting next to me and began talking to me. She asked my name and if I had a phone number. I told her sorry that the phone I have isn’t mine and I wouldn’t be able to give her the number. At one point she complained that it smelled bad and began peeling an orange and huffing the rind. It was really weird. She literally had the orange peel up to her nose and was just breathing that in with long deep breaths and sighing every time. After the rind was all used up she started huffing actual pieces of orange. I figured it was because of the smell….but she didn’t need to be huffing it the way she was. It was weird.
Wow, I’m at 2,600 words for this post alone. I’m sorry. I think I’ll spill over into a part 3 now to finish off my time here in Sn. Fabian at the Bible school.
