Day 11 & Isabella Trip

Hi all! These are the blogs that you missed from the team that went to Isabella. Hope you enjoy catching up with all that we did on the four days that we were away from the main group – we sure did!

Isabella Trip: day one:

We travelled by twin prop plane from Manila Airport!

day two:

Woke up at 7:15. We had breakfast at 8 which was sweet bread with eggs, before practising song items to perform at church.
Church began at 9:30 and was located right next door to pastor rays house. The worship service was exciting as you could feel the presence of God and it was evident that the people we were with truly loved God and longed to serve him 100%.
As the service continued the majority of the group left the meeting to run Sunday school for the children.  We performed a puppet show on the story of Samuel and Eli and sung songs which the children joined in and thoroughly enjoyed.
We then shared lunch with Pastor Ray, his lovely wife Winnie, their 2 beautiful children and a few other extremely kind and welcoming Filipino people from the church.

We kicked off our Sunday afternoon by squeezing into a small van and driving to a local supermarket, where we stocked up on candy and other various and interesting snacks to get us through the rest of the day as we approached the treacherous caves.
The first cave we entered can only be described as simply beautiful. Although we were surrounded by mud, looking up through the holes in the roof of the cave and seeing old trees whilst the rain was pouring down, allowing us to be refreshed by the natural shower.
The second cave was more challenging and unfortunately not everyone in the group was able to participate due to injuries.
We climbed a steep, muddy, path leading up to the entrance of the cave, clinging tightly to vines to prevent the possible painful and dangerous fall. The cave was dark and being in the Philippines we did not follow the ‘Australian Safety Guidelines’ as we did not have helmets.
As we approached the centre of the cave, we were greeted by a beautiful ‘mud bath’.
Running through waist high mud was highly entertaining and there was a mass of spear tackling and wrestling that took place along with mud being thrown from all directions.
We battled to climb down the steep, muddy, cliff face, feeling complete relief as we reached flat ground and rinsed off our muddy clothes in the rushing river.

The drive back home (Pastor Ray’s house) was a long one but we made it and were rewarded with the chance to have bucket showers and a beautiful dinner cooked for us by Winnie before debriefing the day and going to bed.

day three:

Hey guys, Seb D here, (hi Mum, Dad, Nic, Alex and everyone else). On Monday we got up (obviously) I forgot what we had for breakfast but I know it was awesome. First outing was a primary school visit, we arrived there and we were greeted by the admin. We heard a loud drum sound and to our amazement, around 1400 primary school kids assembled themselves by age with military precision, and the staff played some sort of school song. All the kids performed a synchronized line dance. Still stunned, we decided to join the kids in their simultaneous symphony of movement. They loved it. Following this, we sang “Stand up and Shout it” (and I mean SHOUT) because we had no guitars and no mics. Thanks to Kaity B and Phoebe C’s demonstrations, the kids quickly got the hang of the stand up and sit down actions. After this, we split into pairs and teams of 3, and we proceeded to visit many of the class rooms in the school. Mr Bent and I awkwardly introduced the kids to the concept of Australia through interestingly executed kookaburra calls and badly tied balloon kangaroos. I know that many other teams were a little more confident with their class chat than Mr. Bent and I might have been.

The team and I had a lovely lunch of chicken and rice (cooked by our fantastic Winnie). A smaller team of us split off to help out with the little kid’s school (I believe that they were almost too tired to move by this stage)

The rest of us were whisked away to the Isabella State University (ISU) for some more class chats. We were greeted in the office by the university singing group who were more than happy to sing a song for us (song is an understatement, it was incredible). We nervously decided to assert ourselves with one of our own songs. Nathan did very well playing guitar without paper in front of him; this descended into a light hearted competition but we were quickly put back in our place when they threw at us a traditional Philippine song of courage. They basically slaughtered us with their vocal prowess.

Anyway, we had an hour and a half tour of the uni, which also had a high school on campus. News of my arrival quickly spread and before we knew it, we had a throng of followers, mainly female, screaming, wanting a picture with me (this later became a regular occurrence with school visits). At one staged, Mr. Puzey thought it appropriate to drop me in the deep end. I nervously shared my story with the high schoolers. To my delight they were all dead quiet and my speech just flowed. I think that was a good experience for me. After a bit more walking, Pastor Ray led us to meet more of the staff members, and we shared a brief but insightful bible study in the uni medical clinic. Mr. Bent shared his story and I think we all cried a little on the inside. Lol.

At home (Pastor Ray’s home), we chilled out and chatted, and had an amazing dinner followed by an awesome rest; I’m fairly sure we had an awesome rest because I don’t remember it.

Fair the well the peeps from down under and we shall see you when we return early morning on Sunday.

-Seb D

:3

Day four:

Wake up was very hard and felt sapped of all energy. Breakfast was the closest to an Australian breakfast we have had yet, with snaggas and eggs with rice. Feeding was up first. t was good to go to the school and distribute the food, but at the end we had nine cups of food left so the teacher chose nine students to eat out of a whole class We all found it very unfair! Lunch was called kaldereta which consisted of a spicy marinated beef with the best and freshest mango we have ever eaten. We then had a two hour rest. It was a good rest but another hard wakeup. After that we went to the high school to speak to the students about us, our country and some of our stories. We then took a horse and cart ride back to where we were staying. It was enjoyable but quite painful. Dinner was the best tasting pork with sweet and sour sauce ever and of course more rice.....
Later that night we went to some local bible studies then we went home and slept.

Day five:

We had Communion breakfast which consisted of solid sticky rice slab with banana leaf, representing Christ’s body and a reddish syrup which represented His blood. We had a trip to the markets and the boys had a haircut under the tree surrounded by the cornfields with Caribou and goats wandering around. We then packed and headed back to the airport for our flight back to Manila. When we arrived the big team were at the children’s home having just finished a bead jewellery making session. Some of us joined in with the movie watching (there was no school for the next day) while others had showers and moved back in to our rooms.

So ends the tales of our adventure to Isabella!

Day 11 Blog

What a fantastic day! We had a sleep-in ... YAY! Up at 7:30 for an awesome breakfast (yes again) cooked by our lovely and huggable ladies in the kitchen. Oat slice, eggs and bananas! We got given our basketball uniforms and so ourselves organised with our Pesos and money belts and headed out to the markets. We had an hour and a half to shop. Sorry if we didn’t get the right presents for you guys but it is such a pressure to have all those people saying, “Mam, Sir, you buy”! We did our best and we learnt to barter. We decided that the best story of the day was Alex Taylor who said that the lady he was buying from kept dropping the price even though he didn’t say anything to her. Obviously the silent approach works. J

From the markets, we travelled back to the ministry centre and had lunch (pasta, rice, chicken, tomato and vegetable stew and a slice. We then crammed into a bus and a red van to play our hearts out in a school basketball competition. The drive to the school was intense. Uphill, driving slowly, gave us plenty of time to enjoy the beautiful views of the countryside. We all agree that the noise and screams of the students was incredibly loud. They are definitely basketball fanatics. We fortunately had the help of a ring-in called Josh. He regularly plays basketball and is quite tall, which helps when you play basketball. We had a pretty good team but it seemed that so did the Filipino’s. The first half was a treat to watch. At half-time we had an opportunity to introduce ourselves, for Jamie to share his testimony and for us to sing a couple of worship songs. We handed out gospel tracts to all the spectators and gave as many as we could, a gift. It was awesome. The Justin Bieber look-alike, Sebastian, was soooo popular with the girls! The second-half game was looking to be just as exciting as the first but there was an unfortunate accident which ended up with one of the Filipino guys getting quite seriously hurt. Pastor Pete and Mrs Scrivener performed first-aid while we decided to mingle with the crowd, sign autographs (yes, we are famous) and show our friendly, after-game, side.

Our hearts raced a little when Mr Beacham tried to start the bus and the usual roar of the engine was non-existent. But without missing a beat, he rolled the bus backwards down the hill and bump started the engine. After a roar of approval from the passengers we were off again. The view coming down the hill was no less inspiring. Jolley Bee enjoyed our patronage once again for sundaes and drinks (thirsty work, basketball).

Once back at the YMC we were greeted to the incredible spread of Luchon Baboy or Roast Pig. Some were a little put off by the entire roast pig, as in head, tail and all. There were also other traditional foods for us to try. Can we say that we made a pig of ourselves? We were joined by many of the Filipino people that we worked with us for the past week and a bit. They continued on the festivities but we had a job to do ... devotions at the children’s home.

The children were a little unsettled tonight, but that could just be due to the fact that we are leaving tomorrow. They didn’t want us to read to them and they didn’t want us to go. It was very difficult for us to walk away.

Back at the YMC we got out our journals and began to reflect on our day and our emotions. Our debrief session was a little brief but then we had Luke, Cameron J, Jordan, Kieran and Jamie share with us. Suddenly we were huddled in prayer and tears flowing freely. This wonderful place and people have gotten to us!

It is with excitement and sadness that we go to sleep, knowing that we will be leaving tomorrow.