God has taught me a ton on this trip. More than anything he has taught me more about myself and what my future holds. He showed me aspects of my life I need to work on if I want to be successful for him and he showed me peaks and valleys of mission work. It was almost as if God revealed a little bit of my future as if to say, “Here, this is the basics, are you sure you want to do this?” Its been difficult for me to consider this realization that life in the mission field isn’t going to be easy. I know that sounds silly, but I had this even sillier preconception in my mind that being a Bible translator would be easy just because I knew it was what God wanted me to do. I was following God’s will so he needed to hold up his end of the bargain and make it easy. He’s showed me that its not going to be easy but it will be more rewarding than anything else I could choose to do, simply because that’s his plan for me. I’m not saying the only way to be successful is to be a Bible translator, for me I firmly believe that to be true, but by no means does that hold true for everyone. All it takes to be successful is to do what God’s will is for your life and follow his plan.

Life is short. Times flies. In that time God is showing me I need to work hard and follow his will and that it won’t be easy and that it will take more faith than anything I will ever attempt in life. But he also showed me the rewards. He showed me a village of people that held a prayer service singularly because a couple from America sacrificed a comfortable life so that God’s word would be made available to them. He showed me the amazing churches and ministries that literally would not exist if it weren’t for Bible translators. He showed me the souls that have been saved as a result of this work. Most of all, he showed me more than anything that he wanted me to participate in this work. He wants to use me in this way. Like I said, it’s exhilarating and terrifying and honestly probably not my first career choice after this summer, but I’m slowly realizing that my first choice looks out for my interests.

Once I get home I’ll have much more time to reflect and write a review and summary and such, but those are my thoughts right now. I should have a couple more posts coming so stay tuned for those, but like I said above, this is my last one from the Philippines. I take off from Manila around 9 am on Tuesday and land in Japan around 2:30. I then take off from Japan at 4:35 pm on Tuesday August 3rd and land in New Jersey at 4:30 pm on Tuesday August 3rd. Thats right, I’m going back in time. Wish me luck on that front, I’ve never time traveled to its a new experience. After that I fly from New Jersey to Knoxville at 8 pm and land at 10:30 pm. It’ll be a long trip so please continue to pray for me. I’ll be sure to update this one I get home safely so everyone who is following this knows for sure. Thank you for your prayers!

Its been a crazy, exhausting whirlwind of a trip and I’m ready to be home. I’ll maybe update this again before I fly out, but there really isn’t much left to say, we aren’t doing much here in Manila. We’re just touring a couple places and doing some shopping and lounging around, nothing special.

Thank you all for your prayers and support, they meant the world for me and please continue to pray for safe travel all the way back home.

Blessings

I left off the last update at the beginning of the week of July 19th-23rd. It is now Monday July 26th for me and not a whole ton more has happened. The trip is pretty much finished now, I just have shopping and sight seeing left, so updates aren’t going to be plentiful…I see at most two more from the actual trip and then maybe a couple recap ones. I’m getting losing patience for these journal and blog entries so they’ve been shorter and more to the point. I’ll try to keep them interesting but not a whole ton interesting is going on now so don’t expect much.

On Thursday, we left around 5 to go over to Brother JR’s house for dinner. We show up and get introduced to another team of Filipino’s from American, also from California. I chat with them until the first team from America that I hung out with at the medical mission in Ilocos Norte show up as well. We sang a couple of worship songs led by the second team and then I was asked to share a quick devotional for the group. There ended up being a lot more people there than I originally expected. On top of the 20 people from America there were at least another 15 from GCF (Greenhills Christian Fellowship, Darwin’s church). It was a little more pressure than I thought I would have when I was asked to give the devotional, but oh well, it went well regardless. I shared a parable from Peter Rollins and talked about how works are evidence of faith and our lives need to have works evident in them. Works do not save us, faith alone and the grace of God saves us, but our lives should still have works that spill over from this faith.

It was a fun time and there was really good food. I need to be careful when I grab food though, my eyes were definitely bigger than my stomach. It was set up buffet style and I immediately grabbed a bunch of the first dish, what I thought was chicken, and moved down the line grabbing some more chicken, beef, and a cold vegetable egg roll thing with garlic sauce on top. It would have been better if it had been heated up, the egg roll that is. I also was given a bowl of not so good soup. The “chicken” that I grabbed immediately and a lot of actually turned out to be fish, as I learned after my first bite. There was still a lot left on my plate, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I just shuffled it around and cut it up and spread it out so it didn’t look like there was a lot left. Instead of taking it up to the sink too I just shoved it under my chair so they would find it after I left (I also didn’t eat the soup because it wasn’t very good). I was too embarrassed to take it up to the sink and hand it to one of the girls washing the dishes with so much food left on it. Oh well. I managed to sneakily slide it under my seat, although the girl next to me was a little suspicious I think. As I reread that I realize how silly what I did might seem if I was sitting at a dinner table as you might probably assume. That was not the case, we were all sitting in chairs arranged around the outside of a large room.

It was a fun time of fellowship with some neat people. I now have a place to stay in San Jose if I want with the youth pastor of one of the groups that were there. He was a really nice guy and I just might take him up on that offer, I’ve never been to California so now is as good a time as ever I think. I handed out my email address and name and hopefully I’ll at least be able to connect with some of them on facebook.

On Friday I got an invitation to go teach at a Nazarene Bible college nearby in the afternoon. It was a welcome invitation because it was at least something to do with my time. Other than the dinner the night before I literally did nothing all week. I’m not complaining because Darwin was busy and I didn’t want to interrupt his work, just stating a fact. They wanted me to teach both Greek and Hebrew to a class in under 3 hours. It was difficult but I think I go the job done. The professor whose class I was taking over had actually spent over 11 years in the States so we were able to converse very well and had a good conversation over lunch. One interesting thing did come up though. We somehow got around to the topic of different English translations of the Bible and he promptly told me that the only good version is the King James Version. He quoted an author of a book in the States that firmly believes that the King James Version of the Bible is the only valid English version. He said he used to use NIV until he saw the light. I thought it was interesting and I’ll just leave it at that.

The students responded real well and seemed very excited to be taught the languages. There were around 12 of them and I actually pushed back a test they had scheduled for the day so they might have just been excited for that…but I’ll just go with the former. In 3 hours I taught them how to read and write in both Greek and Hebrew and both of the alphabets of both languages. It was interesting and a ton of information but they did well.

On Saturday we had a water baptism with Darwin’s church at a nearby resort. It wasn’t really a resort by American standards because there was no hotel or overnight place, it was more just a beautiful pool complex nestled in the mountains that you go to for a day. It was called the Neverland Mountain Resort. The setting was absolutely gorgeous. The mountains surrounding it were beautiful, the only downside was the weather. I didn’t even bother bringing my swimming suit because I knew it wouldn’t be great. It was about 75 and cloudy all day and obviously the pools weren’t heated to the water was chilly. Not ideal swimming conditions for me, but the kids loved it and swam all day, which was good. It was a fun day of just hanging out and talking to people.

Sunday was another relaxing day full of fellowship. Church was normal in the morning and after church we had a goodbye party for the intern Pastor at their church. He had been there for 2 and a half years and based on the tears and heartfelt goodbyes he was a wonderful man and will really be missed. I only knew him for a couple weeks, obviously, but he was extremely friendly to me and a great friend. We connected because we were two of the younger people in the church and it was good hanging out with him.

Today is Monday and my last week here. Its absolutely insane that its my last week. I’m having a hard time comprehending it, but I’m also very ready to be home. I’m miss my family and friends and I’m really looking forward to this next school year. The rest of this week has sight seeing around Baguio and souvenir shopping in my schedule, as well as putting together pictures and videos and debriefing the whole trip with Darwin. A week still seems pretty long but I know it will fly by so please continue to pray for me to use this last time I have here the best I can. Friday we drive down to Manila and very very early next Tuesday morning I fly out.

Thank you for you prayers and support, I can’t begin to explain how much I have felt and appreciated them. Please continue to lift me up in prayer as I am finishing this up. Sorry no pictures this time to keep it interesting.

God bless!

Well we ended up leaving around 7:30 after breakfast then, Darwin, Nenette, Jerry, and I.  We got to the gas station and met up with the rest of the team.  It was JR and his wife and Virgie, but no one else I recognized.  The champ dentist from the last medical mission showed up but then all of the sudden couldn’t make it, I wasn’t sure why.  We had a van rented and JR has his Toyota SUV too.  The SUV was super nice and I was placed in there with a couple of dentists.  It was very comfortable and far better than any transportation, other than Darwin’s SUV, that I had ridden in so far.  We got underway around 8:30 and chatted while we rode down the mountain to the lowlands.  It was a beautiful drive and I didn’t realize how close to the coast Baguio is, you can see it if you just get to the right place in the city.  Its only about an hour and a half drive away.

The drive was very long but good.  We made about 4 or 5 stops along the way to pick up rice cake, chichicorn, and some other rice type products, sweet rice I think, and lunch.  It got kind of annoying after a while but oh well, it really did help break up the long drive.  It was fun to spend time with the people and the team.  We got there around 5 pm, totaling about a 9 hour drive.  It was a weird place.  It was pretty remote, we drove on a dirt road for about 30 minutes to get there, but the houses that we stayed at were incredibly nice.  The place as a whole was remote and primitive, except for these huge houses.  It was strange.  I was originally going to be put in a half finished house with the other guys, but then apparently there wasn’t enough room so they moved me by myself to a different house.  At first I was apprehensive about this, leaving the familiarity of people I know to go somewhere all by myself, but I realized I most likely would have my own room and sleeping space if I did this so I agreed.  It turned out fantastic.  It ended up having air conditioning and a mattress.  It truly was a blessing how wonderful the house was, despite how incredibly weird it was that there was this proverbial oasis in the middle of a primitive village.  After being shown to my room, JR told me to rest for a little then walk back to the church where we were doing a film showing.  We ate dinner and then had the film showing.  The whole time we ate off of banana leaves, it was pretty awesome.

(I tried to edit this picture and rotate it, but every time I did and saved it, it just reverted back to this sideways form…sorry, the best I can do, just turn the computer I guess)

The food itself wasn’t really that good, I didn’t eat a whole ton, but as usual there was rice so I had at least something to eat.  The film showing had around 150 people show up and seemed to be received very favorably.  It was a good intro to the weekend and setup for the medical mission the next day.  We were asked as a group to come up and sing a song before the film showing, it was interesting.  Thank God there wasn’t a microphone near me.

Saturday was a day of more strange things.  This travel to Ilocos was a different trip to a different culture with different people.  We woke up and ate breakfast at 6:30.  While we were eating breakfast, an older man walked up and started talking to Betty, an older woman who was helping cook for us.  She started wailing and crying all of the sudden at the man that was talking to her.  I asked Jerry what was going on and he said that “there has been an accident”.  I thought maybe a car accident but I really didn’t know what to expect.  Lily, JR’s wife, called me over to pray for this woman and she informed me that this woman’s son was shot and killed the previous day, murdered.  Wow.  I didn’t know what to pray, I didn’t know what to say and it wouldn’t be the first time in the next 24 hours this would happen to me.

We moved on with the day and started setting up, I quickly removed this from my mind because it seemed that the woman did.  Betty was motoring about as normal and didn’t seem to be shaken up at all after we prayed.  I didn’t understand it and there are so many miscommunications that I wasn’t sure what exactly had happened.  I was with Virgie again in the pharmacy, at this point I was a master and knew exactly what I was doing.

A team from America actually showed up, although I didn’t realize it at the time because they were all Filipino.  It turned out that JR’s nephew from the States, Lewis, has been taking youth over here to the Philippines for a number of years now and they joined us in the medical mission.  Lewis was wonderful and a pleasure to chat with.  We talked throughout the day and it turns out they were going to be in Baguio later that week so I offered to meet up with them and see them again.  He mentioned something about a youth rally they are doing, I’m not exactly sure what that is or what it entails, but I think I signed up for it.  Should be fun and something to fill my time with.  Its crazy that theres really only two weeks left now as I type this on Tuesday.  Really crazy, time is absolutely flying.

The medical mission seemed to go really well.  The same surgeon from Manila showed up and performed a ton of surgeries again.  There were a ton of circumcisions this time, as opposed to zero last time.  Older guys, who I wouldn’t expect would ever want to do that, around 16 years old got circumcised.  There was a little boy that just couldn’t stand it too.  They had to have 3 guys pin him down as he yelled so stinking loud the whole time.  Every time a stitch went in he just wailed.  People were giggling but I couldn’t help but feel terrible for him.  I don’t know if they numb the “area” at all but even if they do it has to be pretty excruciating.

The day was a success, although we didn’t receive the levels of Ambaguio.  I totaled everything and had to tell myself that its not about numbers, its about the fact that we actually helped people.  Instead of 1,000 we had a total of 326 patients.  There were 99 dental and 51 surgeries and over 230 medical patients.

Here is a picture of the group:

After we cleaned up and ate dinner, JR told us we were going over to the house of the woman who’s son was murdered the day before for a short service.  It was after dark and we drove about 15 minutes to the other side of the village to the house.  It was surreal.  I’ll try to describe the strange scene as best I can.

We walk up to the house and there is a light on inside and there are men sitting on the porch outside.  There are only women inside, I don’t know why.  We slowly file into to a scene that I was not expecting.  Remember we are in rural, back-country Philippines, so anything real nice isn’t really expected.  We walk in and see the coffin of silver, shiny metal in the light of four huge equally silver and shiny lamp-stands surrounding it.  Behind the coffin there are white drapes from the ceiling to the floor with gold embroidery.  The coffin itself is open and there is a glass barrier over the dead body.  There’s fog above the mans face as if he just finished breathing.  He’s dressed in simple white clothes and his hands are at his side.  No wounds are visible at all, which makes me wonder where the gunshot wound was that killed him.  The inside of the coffin itself is bordered with white silk and gold embroidery, matching the drapes hanging in the background.  On the underside of the open lid there is a picture of Jesus, but with lights flashing all around it in a pinwheel fashion, much like bad Christmas lights.  In front of the casket on two plastic chairs sit the immediate family survived by this man.  There is a young girl who clearly didn’t get it, no more than 6 years old.  She fidgeted on the chair while the widow held her in place.  The widow is 8 months pregnant.  You can see the tears on her face as she stares into the distance, not looking at anything in particular.  The tears dry and almost as if timed along with that she looks back over at the coffin and her eyes become moist again.  JR walked up to her and offered his condolences.  She spoke a response, her mouth moved, but no sounds came out.  She made no noise and didn’t seem all together, but who would considering the circumstances?  My heart went out to her.  It must just be the culture and something I’m missing, but it seemed like no one was very somber.  Men were gathering outside as we were taking seats in a semi-circle surrounding the casket.  The service starts with praise and worship, some basic songs that are led by the two pastors who have been taking care of us the whole time.  Honestly, not one of us knew the man or the woman and we had only met the mother of the man literally 24 hours beforehand.  I was struggling with my emotions and also struggling with why the heck we were there in the first place.  We were invading this poor widow’s privacy.  She barely responded when people talked to her much less when we sang songs and prayed.  Then the pastor asks me to say something.  Excuse me?  I was dumfounded and more than a little frustrated.  Why was I being asked to say something?  I knew it was an honor and to turn them down would be very rude, but I could think of very few people who would be less qualified than me to say something at that point.  I don’t think they realize that I’m only 20 and I’m not a pastor and I’ve never had any training of that sort.  It was impromptu and caught me off guard.  What does one say at the funeral of a stranger in a foreign country who never attended church and most likely wasn’t a Christian?  How do you address that?  It was very difficult for me.  I ended up stuttering through James 1:2 and explaining that no matter how strange and chaotic life seems sometimes, there is a purpose for everything and every trial will only bring us closer to God if we allow him to work on us.  I was told our presence there really encouraged the mother of the man, but I was worried about the widow, I just can’t help but feel we invaded her privacy.

It was an experience, to say the least.  It made me think about a lot of things and was a good reminder again of my own mortality.  Going through the funeral of stranger that never attended church in a foreign country is a strange and thought provoking experience.  I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole thing.  We trekked back to the cars and rode back to our respective houses where we part ways and went to bed.

We woke up bright and early and once again.  The mantra that “nothing is ever how you expect” continued for me.  With how long it took to travel there on Friday and the fact that there were now doctors from Manila with us who had to travel even further, I figured we would get on the road as soon as possible.  JR told me we would have a church service around 7 am then I fully expected us to be on the road no later than 8:30.  I need to stop expecting things.  We didn’t start said church service until 7:45 as we ate breakfast around 7.  Now, before the church service started, I made sure to ask JR if I was going to be preaching.  He warned me the Wednesday before we left to prepare something just in case, but up until this point I hadn’t heard anything more about it.  He said he hadn’t heard anything more either so we both shrugged it off and I left my notes in the car.  My rule of thumb here is that with how unpredictable this stuff us, I need to always assume I’ll be asked to preach only up until the actual service starts.  I mean, no one starts a church service without first asking a person to preach right?  Wrong.  It happens.  It happened to me.  We sing some praise and worship songs and then we go into a time of testimony about the previous day and the medical mission.  People go up to the front and share stories, no more than 2 minutes long, about the previous day.  During this time of the service JR calls me outside to talk to one of the pastors where I’m asked if I will preach.  In ten minutes.  I’m not kidding, this actually happened.  Thank God I had my patented sermon that I’ve been giving this whole time memorized otherwise I have no idea what I would have done.  New rule of thumb: never assume you aren’t going to preach only until there is actually someone else up there at the pulpit preaching.  I’m not sure I’m even ready to give in to that yet either, I could foresee some scenario where they ask me to preach as well as someone else or something.  Oh well, it went smoothly regardless of the lack of notice and I was told it went really well with the people.  After that we had a time of prayer where I was asked to come up and pray for a woman who was sick.  Another impromptu request with no details and no warning.  Honestly, I was getting very frustrated by this.  It was really annoying because I was getting all this undeserved attention just because I’m American.  Any number of the people along with our team are both double my age and far more qualified to pray and be a spiritual leader than me.  I felt inadequate and pampered and it wasn’t a good feeling.  I didn’t want them to ask me to pray just because I was an American.  We got through that and then ended the service with songs and prayer and big group pictures.  We didn’t end up getting on the road until 10:30 am, much to my surprise.

I really like this picture because of how difficult it is to spot me.  Normally, I stick out like a sore thumb in every picture, but my skin tones matches the wall behind me very well and only head is showing so its very difficult to find me at first, at least I think so.  I thought it was a funny picture.

We drove for a couple hours and then stopped at Fort Ilocando Resort.  It was an absolutely gorgeous, world-class resort.  It even had its own mini-zoo with a 5 day old baby monkey.  Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera on me so I couldn’t get any pictures.  We continued driving and made quite a few stops throughout the day for other tourist locations, sweet rice wrapped in banana leaves, more rice cake, and lunch and dinner.  The stops helped break the long trip up and Jerry and I eventually made it back to Darwin’s at 10 pm.  It was a long day and I slept well that night.

This is us at the resort:

The next couple of days, Monday and so far today on Tuesday, Darwin and Nenette have been working non-stop because they have the help of some volunteers from the mountains.  They worked from 8 am till midnight yesterday.  As a result I’ve had a lot of time to myself and I’ve spent time with Dave and Eugene and Laurel and watched a lot of tv.  Its been relaxing and really thats what the rest of my trip is going to entail.  As I’m typing this now on Tuesday, two weeks from now I’ll be in Japan waiting for my connecting flight to New Jersey.  Its crazy how time is flying, at the beginning of the trip I found it hard I would last a week, much less make it to this point.  I’m ready to be home though.  I’ll keep updating the blog periodically but there really won’t be much more to say as I don’t have anything planned.  These journal entries are getting tedious too so I’m not sure how much detail I’ll be willing to type out.  We’ll see.

Thank you all again for your support, it means the world to me and I can’t wait to share stories from this trip in person with anyone who wants.  Please continue to pray for safe travel and that I make the most of my remaining time here.

I left off at the Bible school in Sn. Fabian.  Its been a few days since then so I’ll try to catch you up.  After leaving Sn. Fabian Thursday morning, Darwin and I traveled to Bagabag to tour the SIL facility there.  Our original plans were to stay overnight there, but SIL is closing down the facility and no longer allow visitors overnight.  It’s a sprawling compound with a lot of buildings and even its own airport.  This facility is located in the middle of the northern mountains in the Philippines so back in the day before many of the roads were paved, a tiny plane was necessary to shuttle supplies to remote missionaries.  The need has gradually declined and is now mostly non-existent and the operating costs of the facility are high, so SIL is shutting it down and handing it over to the government.  It was a beautiful place and seemed like a wonderful place to live.

This is a picture of the road going in:

We then drove to Lagawe to observe the translation work that was going on there.  We met an American missionary there, Ann West.  There was also a team of Filipino’s who were working on the translation.  The team is made of up 3 Filipino women, Ann is just a consultant, there to help with any questions they have.  She is a wonderful woman and was incredibly friendly and helpful to me.  She has been in the country for 43 years now, I think Darwin said she is 70 years old.  She started from the beginning and started explaining everything about how translation work is done, from surveys and such to semantics and then to problems with translations.  She shared with me some problems they ran into that day in translating the book of Job, it was incredibly interesting and thought provoking.  It made my head hurt for a bit, but it was also extremely exciting to actually get a taste of what my future is.  I was actually getting real hands on experience to what I’ll hopefully be doing one day.

In the mountains the people are always spitting these immense amounts of red colored spit.  It looked like tocacco spit and its really gross.  It stains the ground and smells terrible and there are signs everywhere telling people not to spit there.  I found it its a weird mixture of a tobacco leaf, some sort of nut, and a small piece of lime.  Its used to get rid of hunger and it makes you salivate a ton.  The mountain people view staving off hunger and eating less meals as a strength so they love chewing this in order to help their strength.  It can be known as “moma”.  It led to this hilarious sign, I hope you think its as funny as I do.

The next day, Friday, Darwin and I woke up and ate breakfast in the city with Ann and then wandered for a while because she had work to do and we didn’t have a schedule.  We ended up back at the house where the translation is taking place and she showed me a little more of what they were doing.  Its very confusing but also very stimulating to work through a translation and double check it.  I’m real happy at how much I could pick up and keep along with because of some of my training so far in school.  It was encouraging.

On Saturday we woke up real early, 4 am, and drove back to Baguio.  I was exhausted.  I had been on the go traveling from place to place with no real rest since June 9th, and only a few days before that I traveled for 24 hours to get here.  Needless to say I was really looking forward to talking with my parents and Krista and resting for a few days.  We got back around 10 am and I rested for the remainder of the day until dinner, when I met with RuthAnn at Pizza Hut for dinner.  It was just the two of us and it was really good to be able to share my experiences so far with her, my frustrations and the good things.  She laughed throughout the whole recap, even at the real difficult parts, and it really put things in a good light.  At the time, a lot of the frustrations I had weren’t funny at all, but looking back some of the things really were quite comical and ridiculous.  It was fun.  She also had two women traveling with her and they were really nice as well.

Sunday we went to church and Sunday night Darwin and the other church elders meet for bowling.  I went along this time.  Its a lot of fun.  All of them speak very good English so I could actually interact and communicate with the people.  My first game I bowled an 81, it was a warmup.  Then I busted out a 157 and ended at 108.  It was a good night for me, I was proud of myself.  A 115 average isn’t too shabby.  While we were waiting for some stragglers to finish up there games, one of the Pastors invited me to play some 9 ball with him.  I got demolished, my billiards are a little more rusty than bowling.  Oh well.

I ended up going to bed Sunday night and setting my alarm for 2 am for the World Cup final.  I got up and put on my Holland jersey for good luck, only to witness a heartbreaking loss.  Robben blew his chance in the first break away, not to take anything away from the amazing save made by the Spanish keeper, but he should have put that in.  Oh well, I do have to admit that Spain was the better team.  I really enjoyed watching it though.

I slept in till around 11 and rested until dinner when RuthAnn and her friends came over for pizza and fellowship.  We sat around the table for a couple of hours and had a really good time.  It was fun.

Today is Tuesday.  I again rested and relaxed today, but was productive as well.  I sent off some emails, typed up this blog and cleaned up my room a bit.  It was a good day for me.

Well like I said time is flying.  I’m supposed to go on a trip this weekend for another medical mission but there is a typhoon coming and supposed to hit later this week at the same spot that the mission is at, so our plans to travel are tentative right now.  Other than that, I have no other plans here.  Its crazy how time flies.  Again, thanks for your prayers and I’ll try to keep this interesting in the next couple of weeks.

(oh and I updated the mountains blog and put some pictures in it, so check those out)

I left off on Sunday after I got back from a weekend in the mountains.  It was a good time but I was ready to be back to civilization and a soft bed.  The rest of the week all I had planned was to teach, so I prepared for that.

If there is one thing this trip has really helped with its my discipline.  I have really got into a habit of reading my Bible every day and spending time praying.  Its something I really struggle with at school because of how busy life can be and because theres literally always something to do, but hopefully this will whip me into shape a little and develop some much needed discipline in this area of my life.  All this teaching of Greek and Hebrew has been really good for me as well as it has helped me keep up on the languages.  I’ve been studying each a little every day, especially Greek since I’ll be continuing that in the fall.

Well I taught Greek every day this week before I left, which was Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, at 3 pm every day.  It was going really well, as far as pronunciation and the alphabet, then we ran into a problem that I really should have seen – but didn’t.  As we move on from pronunciation of Greek words we move into translation…into English.  Remember, these Bible students barely speak English at all and most have only an elementary education.  So my translator, to whom Greek is also brand new, is having to translate my English to Ilokahnu about the Greek language.  It proved to have some difficulties, especially with specific grammar aspects, like the definite article.  We ended up working through it and I decided not to move any further and on Wednesday we just hung out, practiced more pronunciation and I taught each of them how to write their name in Greek and Hebrew.  It was a good time and great way to end the class and my time with them.  They prayed for me at the end and we said goodbye.  It was a fun time.

This is the class.

This was my translator the whole time, Pastor Jimmy.

And this is Jimmy and his precious daughter.

Well it was an interesting 12 days.  I ended up meeting a lot of really cool people, getting a couple great workouts from hiking, and brushing up on my ancient Biblical languages.  I had fun but I’m ready to be back to internet, not having any communication with anyone for the whole time was rough.  I’m not sure what my itinerary looks like from this point forward since things are being shuffled around but I’ll make sure to keep the blog updated though as I think I’ll have internet from here out.  I’m hoping if I have some spare time in Baguio soon that I’ll have a facebook album up with a lot more pictures.  Its difficult to upload pictures to the blog, you have to do it one at a time, and facebook albums are much simpler.  I’ll make sure to post a link to the album here and make it public so those that don’t have facebook can view it.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support, they are all greatly appreciated and I felt them all.  Please continue to think of me in your prayers as this trip is quickly winding to a close, time is flying and I’m surprised at how its already the second week of July.

Remember, “God will sustain what he has placed in your heart”.  I’m learning that more and more, I hope you take it to heart as well.

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.

Well following the hotel room on Thursday night, we drove a short hour up the mountain in a van to Ambaguio where the medical mission would take place the following day.  The rest of the day we rested and hung out as the team assembled in Ambaguio.  I like saying “the team assembled”, it sounds more exciting than it actually was.  Darwin arrived in the late afternoon with some secretaries to help with the registering and paperwork and also a dentist.  Darwin informed me that my professor that helped set this internship up for me, RuthAnn Price, will actually be in Baguio around the 12th-16th of July so the itinerary is changing so I can see her.  Then Brother JR arrived with his wife and a surgeon and his wife from Manilla.  All in all there were about 20 people.  As far as medical professionals, there was a surgeon, an OB/GYN, a dentist, and a couple nurses.  Other than that we were all just along for the ride and helped out in any way possible.  Friday and Saturday night we slept on a concrete floor with nothing but a bamboo mat beneath us.  I will never take a mattress for granted anymore.  After the two nights my back was killing me and needed something soft to sleep on.  I don’t know if you’ve ever tried, but it’s next to impossible to sleep for more than two hours straight on such a hard surface because body parts are constantly cramping or falling asleep.  It wasn’t very much fun but it was the accommodations we were put in in this tiny town, so I was by no means complaining.

We got up on Saturday incredibly early, 5:00 am.  We had a group devotional at 5:30 and ate breakfast at 6.  Then the preparations began.  I ended up at the table with the pharmacy women, it was an easy enough job that didn’t require much interaction with the people, so language skills weren’t necessary.  The vast majority of the people that showed up were from the remote mountains so they knew even less English than the average Filipino.  The people started at registration where they filled out a sheet stating either medical, dental, surgical, or eye help and they were also offered counseling at that point, which took the form of evangelism as well.  The people then were filtered to their respective lines to receive the treatment they needed.  The people who needed medical care went to see a doctor and he prescribed medicine to them and then they came to us and handed us the sheet of paper and we filled the prescription.  I now understand fully the frustrations of a doctors handwriting.  I’ve had to deal with my dad’s my whole life, but it was for letters and things that I had time to figure out.  This was different, there were tons of people coming at us at once and we had to fill prescriptions fast and make sure you got it right.  I kid you not it was just completely unintelligible sometimes.  There were medications for adults, children, and infants.

There were tons of medicines I had never heard of and the whole time I could not help but thinking of the Arrested Development thing about teamocil.    Also, I didn’t know ibeprofun was a prescription drug here.  Its weird because I have about a hundred pills in my bag right now.

I think the whole thing was orchestrated by Brother JR and his wife, I’m not sure her name.  It’s hard to catch names here because a lot of people are introduced as “Brother JR’s wife”, so names sometimes aren’t even mentioned.  She helped us in the pharmacy while he roamed.  They were extremely nice and both spoke very good English.  It was great to have someone to share with and have a conversation where I didn’t feel like I had to speak slowly and in very basic English.  They said they have family in the States and visit there for a whole month sometimes.  Darwin mentioned something about going to visit them now that our plans and itinerary have changed since RuthAnn is coming.

On the sheet the people had filled out to have their prescription filled there was a box to check yes or no if they prayed to have Christ come into their heart.  I thought maybe thats how we judged giving out real medicine to people.  If the box was checked yes then we give the real deal, if its checked no then we just give them sugar pills.  They are just simple mountain people, they will never know the difference.  That way, in two weeks when they aren’t healed, we ask if they accepted Christ.  When they say no we say, huh, maybe theres a connection there.  If you want to be healed maybe you need to ask Christ into your heart.  Then we give them the real medicine.  I think thats how it should have been done.  I don’t care how people are saved, just as long as they get saved.

The minor surgeries that were performed were incredible.  They were cyst and mole removals mostly.  They said they do circumcisions normally too but there were none today.  There was a 5 year old boy that had a cyst right next to his adam’s apple on his neck that he had to have removed.  He didn’t even flinch.  They had men standing by to hold him down and they weren’t even necessary.  It was amazing.  The kid was so brave, admittedly braver than I would be in that situation.  He had a knife going into his neck and he didn’t move a muscle.  Wow.

The dentist worked extremely hard.  She saw over 100 patients during the day.  She worked from 7 am till at least 6 pm straight with only a break for lunch.  She was exhausted at the end of the day, normally they have two or three dentists that handle 100 between them.  Instead she just took them all, it was incredible.

I thought the way they did the eye exams was neat too.  Darwin had them read a passage from the Bible to test their sight.  He said that this was incredibly important because it literally may be their only encounter with the Bible their entire life.

The total people served with various medical attention ended up being 993.  Incredible.  Which means there were easily over 1,000 people there.  There were over 40 surgeries and like I said over 100 dental patients.

When I asked to be busy my wish was fulfilled.  I was on my feet the whole day constantly filling prescriptions.  It was really good and the time flew by as a result.  I was exhausted at the end of the day…then I had to go to sleep on the concrete again, it was pretty miserable, but satisfying to have served so many people.

Sorry there are no pictures for the medical mission.  Darwin had Jerry go around all day and take pictures and record video, that was his job, so I didn’t even bring my camera out of my room.  I’ll get the pictures later though once I get back to Baguio and hopefully put some up.

Sunday we woke up and had breakfast and then sort of a group debriefing and devotional time.  We sat around and shared some neat stories with the team that happened the day before.  I was asked to share a devotional so I did so and then we were on our way.  We stopped at the bottom of the mountain at the hotel from Thursday night and had rested and ordered lunch there.  There was kind of a festive air about the place, it was a lot of fun.

After lunch I began the next leg of my journey to Sn. Fabian and the Bible school there.  It was only about an hour and a half drive from the hotel so we arrived there in the early afternoon.  I’ll leave off here and begin again in part 2.  I’m gonna put a couple pictures of the spider that was on my wall way back before in Baguio though so you can see how mammoth it was.

Tuesday we woke up pretty early, ate breakfast in Sabang and then hitched a ride out of the village with the Pastor’s husband. He drove us to the point where the bus dropped us off the day before and where we started hiking. We then waited for the bus there for about 2 hours, again, time in this country just isn’t the same as America. We waited at Art’s brother-in-law’s house and watched as they tried to fit a new axle onto a vegetable truck. It was pretty incredible to see how they were doing this with meager tools. Andy Sandberg pounding on the engine with a hammer in Hot Rod anyone?

In Sabang

We ended up hooking up with the bus and then I participated in the single worst vehicle ride of my entire life I think. I know I’ve already said that before but it just keeps getting worse. I now understand completely why they put me at the front of the bus before because this time we were stuck in the back. The front of the bus is bad enough going down and up hills of rocks but the back is ten times worse. I literally braced myself and had tense muscles for the entirety of the 2 hour drive. It was more exhausting than a two hour hike. I bounced and almost hit my head on the ceiling multiple times. It didn’t help at all that I had my computer along in my back pack which I held on my lap the whole time trying to keep level. As much as possible I am not taking my computer anywhere remote anymore, its just not worth the risk.

More Tinoc pictures:

We got back to Tinoc and rested for about an hour waiting for our ride to take us to Tawagan (I think thats how you spell it). That drive wasn’t nearly as bad, although I was pretty terrified at certain parts because it was raining and we literally had to drive through flooded rivers to get to the other side of the road and the water was pretty deep. We made it alright though, obviously, and went to the house we were staying at for the night. We really didn’t have an agenda so we just sat around with the family and talked. There was a volleyball sitting in the house so I started kicking it around for fun and ended up playing some games with the 2 and 4 year old. They had another smaller wicker ball and I would spin that really fast like a top and then they would throw the volleyball at it and the smaller wicker ball would go flying. They thought this was hysterical and laughed really hard the whole time, up until I accidentally hit the little guy in the face with the volleyball…not my fault though, I promise. He was fine when it hit him at first then like all little kids, he realized he was hurt and started crying, I felt bad. We ate dinner and pretty much went to bed after that, another day full of travel.

I know I’m probably going to take some crap for this, but I think its funny and worth mentioning. So apparently Art thinks I’m from Indiana, Tennessee. I originally told him that I’m from Tennessee but I go to school in Indiana. He didn’t follow the line of thought that they are two different places, so every time he introduces me now he says I’m Sam from “Indiana, Tennessee”. I think its pretty funny. Also, it took a bit to explain that Indiana does not mean the country of India.

I understand the concept of time differs in foreign countries, but it really hasn’t been more apparent to me now and more specifically because of something that I have noticed about the buildings here. I notice that literally every single building I go into (house, church, store) has at least 2 calendars on the walls. It took me a little longer to notice as well that there are never any clocks on the walls too. I think this is very telling of the culture. Now, it may just be because the calendars are free propaganda for politicians and clocks use batteries or electricity so they cost money, but I think it is a sign of a culture not dominated by time. In American we measure minutes and hours and here they measure days and weeks. You can tell that they a lot days, not hours, for things to happen and take place. Realizing this is going a long way in understanding some of our travel plans and why its difficult for them to give me a set definite itinerary with specific times listed on it.

We woke up in Tawagan Wednesday morning, ate breakfast, and then Art and I wandered around the town in the morning. The kids were all gathering to go the school and all stared at me. I’ve gotten used to this though, literally everywhere I go the children always just stare at me and sometimes, if they are brave enough, they’ll sneak up and touch me. Its entertaining actually. We ended having to walk down to the school because none of the kids were going there. Art said they needed to get down there and apparently the only way they would was if I went down there.

After that we left, probably around 9 am, and started the hike back to Tinoc. The mornings here are sunny and warm and the afternoons are full of rain and a little cooler. We hiked in the morning and while it was beautiful and provided a beautiful view, it was hot and I had to keep my rain jacket on the whole time because I forgot my sunscreen. It was an amazing hike though. You know those old, rickety bridges that dangle over precipices in the movies? Well I crossed two of those today, they weren’t made of wood and they weren’t necessarily over “precipices”, but it was the exact same concept with metal. It was high enough off the ground to get my heart racing too, a really neat experience. I got some good pictures and Jerry took video so I’ll be sure to put those up as soon as I get fast enough internet. The hike wasn’t really all that bad, it would have been quite enjoyable had I not had my back pack, but despite that I did have fun. We got back to Tinoc and ate lunch and I pretty much had the rest of the day to myself to rest. I’ve been up in my room watching movies and playing solitaire. It was a great rest, especially with another day filled with travel tomorrow.

I am currently sitting in a hotel room in Bayonbong. We traveled roughly 8 hours in a bus today and still have another 2 to go tomorrow to get to Ambaguio, the place of the medical mission on Saturday. Much to my surprise the hotel has wireless internet. Its not terribly fast but by no means am I complaining. Its nice to have. Hopefully I’ll get to connect with my family and Krista here. We are no longer in the mountains, though so its very hot and muggy now, especially since its been raining all afternoon. Tomorrow I think we are ascending back into the mountains, but I’m not completely sure.

Thanks for your prayers and support, they are greatly appreciated!

Sam

Well things just don’t work out the way they are supposed to sometimes. I was supposed to have internet, just slow dial up like stuff, this whole time, should have been just enough to check my email and update this blog, but it turns out I won’t, at least not until Friday the 25th I think, even then I’m not sure if I will.

(Quick side story) Friday night, as I was chatting with my mom and sister, they can vouch for me in this, I looked up at the wall and saw this dark blog that was never really there before, or if it was I never noticed it. Upon closer inspection I realized it was a spider. Not an ordinary spider though, a spider literally the size of my hand. It was absolutely freakin huge. And fast. It scurried very quickly. I tried to hit it with my shoe but it got away multiple times. There were some boxes on the floor below it so I swiped it off the ceiling with a pillow and it ran into the boxes. I ended up pinning it up against the wall with a box and killing it that way. I was very proud of myself because this thing was literally a monster. It was legitimately a little scared when I was trying to kill it. Don’t worry, I took pictures, they just aren’t on my computer at the moment. I’ll put them up eventually.

I made it safely to Tinoc after a brutal but beautiful bus ride on Saturday. For those not keeping up, I am no longer with Darwin, I am now with Art. I will meet back up with Darwin this Friday for a medical mission here in the mountains. I had literally the most uncomfortable seat I have ever had in my entire life for a 7 hour bus ride. There was something digging into my shoulder and I couldn’t extend my knees because there was some metal thing sticking out of the bus in front of me. Because it was the very front seat in the bus it was a little smaller than the other and Art insisted on sitting with me. It was cramped, but the ride was absolutely gorgeous. We were driving on these incredible mountains roads with break taking views. It is were a normal drive I would have been a little upset, but that made it all better. Hopefully I’ll have pictures to come soon. You would not believe the “roads” we drove on. They were actually just piles of rocks I think that were driven over enough that they are only kind of flat enough to drive on with a massive bus. It was crazy, some of the bumps literally made the bus jump like a roller coaster. Art told me that about 10 years ago they couldn’t even access their village by vehicle and had to hike everything, I believed every word. It was insane.

We got here and I tried to work the internet card thing that Darwin gave me and it turns out it won’t work at all here. Go figure. I was upset. I was really counting on that contact with people this whole time and all of the sudden it was ripped out from under me. Eventually I got over it and realized it wasn’t the end of the world. I just needed to adapt again. It was just tough expecting it and then not having it, it would have been easier to just not expect it at all. Oh well.

Sunday was a good day though. We woke up around 8 and had breakfast then lounged around and did nothing until around 9:30 when we went to church for Bible study. It is a Lutheran church. The Bible study was all in Tugalo, so I didn’t understand a word. Instead I focused on the measurements in the back of the Bible and trying to see how they equate to our measurements. Did you know that 1 “hin” is the rough equivalent of a gallon? An omer is a half a gallon and around 8 and a half stadions equals a mile. Interesting stuff. It turns out the entire church service was in that language, so I decided to brush up on my history. I read Genesis 1-22, all the chapters. It was good and probably something I need to do more often with random portions of the Bible, just read it through to refresh my memory about things.

After church we were invited to a birthday party for a little boy. They sing happy birthday different over here. Instead of “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear “so and so”, happy birthday to you”; they sing: “Happy birthday to Shirton (the boy’s name), happy birthday to Shirton, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Shirton”. Its sung in the same rhythm and cadence, its just interesting to see the little changes in wording.

I was served rice wine at the birthday party too. Oh and communion was real wine as well, I’m just going crazy over here. The rice wine is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, fermented rice water. It was incredibly strong. I took one sip and knew there was no way I could drink anymore of this stuff. Art also took a sip and said that it was even too strong for him, he who was born and raised and lived his entire life in this very town. That made me feel good, he said I didn’t have to finish it if I didn’t want to. It was only half a cup but it was so strong I don’t think I could have done it. Hope this doesn’t get me in trouble at school ha.

I’ve been in the village for a full day now and one thing that you notice almost immediately is the flies. There are no mosquitos at all up here, just tons and tons of flies. Its pretty crazy and I can’t really describe it to give it justice, you’ll just have to take my word for it. They were everywhere at the birthday party and really everywhere all the time. Art even talked about getting me a mosquito net to fend them off at night but they aren’t bad up in my room, I just keep the blinds closed.

After lunch we walked around TInoc and explored a bit. Art kept saying he wanted to “warm up my feet for the hike tomorrow”. I don’t really know what that says about the hike, but hopefully its not too incredibly grueling…although a challenge would be fun. We’ll see. It is an interesting town, or village I guess. Its smack dab in the middle of the mountains so its incredibly hilly no matter where you walk. It also rains every day multiple times a day. It is also, apparently, just full of churches. As we were walking Art pointed out a Baptist, Wesleyan, 7th Day Adventist, Catholic, and Jehovah’s Witness church. Not to mention the Lutheran one we attended earlier in the day and Pentecostal one that we did not walk by. Thats insane. This is a tiny podunk little village mountain town and they have tons of churches, it blew my mind. We stopped into a store to pick up some snacks for the trip tomorrow and ended up getting caught in a rainstorm. We took shelter in the store for about an hour and a half and just kinda sat around and chatted. Before the store we stopped and watched an amateur basketball game going on. It reminded me of a YMCA old guys recreational league…but worse. Dang were they bad, I don’t mean to make fun, but it was actually pretty funny. They didn’t make one jump shot literally the entire two quarters I watched and turned the ball over almost every other play. One team, I kid you not, just had one guy stay on the offensive side of the court and literally cherry pick the entire time. It was ridiculous. Now, I’m not trying to say I’m better, but I do know good basketball when I see it and that was ugly.

Well now it is Monday and I have internet for a very short bit here before we hike to our first destination and film showing. I’m excited; this is the first film showing ever in this village. We’ll see how it goes. I should have internet again tomorrow, Tuesday, morning/afternoon, but I’ve learned really never to count on anything like that. Hopefully I’ll have a quick update then though. If not thank you for your continued prayers and support. Pray for stamina on these hikes, I really have no idea what to expect as far as difficulty. I’m taking lots of pictures I just have no idea when I’ll be at fast enough internet to put those up. If I don’t update this again I’ll be traveling to Ambaguio where the medical mission is Thursday and Friday, it is another long one, Art said around 7-9 hours so pray for safety on that. Also, continue to pray for the malaria medicine situation and my health. Thank you and I hope everyone reading this is having an amazing summer, I can’t wait to swap stories with you all.

Sam