The Wow of missions in the Philippines 15-16 July 2009

15/07/2009 – 16 /07/2009
I had to finish some last minute reports for my clients, attend meetings and rushed to attend a farewell dinner for my staff who was migrating back to Indonesia after her marriage. It has been such a hectic day!
I got home at 8.30pm and had less than 1 hour to finish packing my luggage. Derrick was already at Terminal 2 and had already checked in when I got there at 10pm.
We boarded the small commercial plane at 0.05 AM on 16 July 2009. We were seated at 12 A & B of Flight PR 506.
The flight was very smooth and we landed in Manila at 3.40am. We waited for almost 1 hour to collect our luggage which did not appear on the conveyor belt.
We discovered later that the airport staff had moved our luggages to the domestic flight PR291. We had waited in vain for one full hour for nothing.
I was quite surprise to find YaKun Kaya Toast in the airport departure hall. We decided to have kaya toast and half boiled eggs for breakfast since we still had some time before the domestic flight PR291 took off at 7am.
The domestic flight was equally smooth and we landed safely at Dumaguette airport at around 8.15am. We managed to take some video shots of the plane that brought us there and a helicopter which was landing while waiting to collect our luggages. These video shots would be good for our video stock library.

Christian Mission in Philippines

Pastor Mike picked us up from the airport and drove us to check into Hotel Palwa.
10.30am
Pastor Mike drove us to the GLCC church at Tanjay.

Gospel Light Christian Church (GLCC) in Tanjay Dumaguete

Soon the whole bunch of GLCC and SMCI team members turned up in two trucks. I was introduced to almost 25 of them within a short span of 1 minute. It was so tough to try to remember everyone’s name within a short span of 1 minute. Some of them like Mark has a big mole on his face and it was really easy to connect that to his name. It was more difficult to remember the names of the Filipinos because they all look the same to me when my mind was dull from lack of sleep.
The team settled down and started to fold the ‘Good News’ gospel tracts to prepare for the afternoon evangelistic campaign.

Student Movement for Christ Team folding Gospel Tracts

The Good News Gospel Tract

We had a simple lunch before splitting up into groups to go to the schools. Derrick was tasked to follow one team while I tagged on to the team led by Pastor Mike.

All squeezed into one van and ready to go sharing the Gospel

1.30pm
Pastor Mike drove us to Bais City High School with 2600 students. I was utterly surprised that we were given the permission to go from door to door to preach and share the gospel with the students in each class.

Bais City High School

I went from class to class to take videos and photos of our team members sharing the gospel to students in different classes. It was quite interesting to observe and see how each individual member went about to share the gospel to the student.

Dr Chong sharing the gospel in a classroom

Students listening to the Gospel message

Dr Chong (a private dental surgeon) was very clinical in the way he shared the gospel while Ivan (ex Mediacorp artist) was full of actions and very passionate when he shared the gospel. I saw Ivan prayed and 10 students readily raised their hands to accept Christ as their Saviour.

Ivan sharing the Gospel in a class

Sharing the Gospel to students who were learning how to type on typewriters

Students listening to the Gospel message

4.11pm
My camera battery was flat and I was feeling hot and dead tired for lack of sleep. A Filipino SMCI staff brought me to the teachers’ room to charge my battery. I found out that the Filipinos in Dumaguette and Bohol speak Cebuana and not Tagalog. One of the SMCI member asked if I was hungry and came back with a bag of barbeque bananas. The banana was coated with sugar and barbequed in a skewer. I think they call this ‘Banana cue’. It is quite different from the ‘goreng pisang’ or fried banana snack we have back in Singapore.

Justin and SMCI staff enjoying their banana cue

4.30pm
We travelled 2 hours to get back to the SMCI (Student Movement for Christ International) centre. We had some fellowship before dinner. The SMCI staff served us with pork trotters and milk fish for dinner.

7pm
We took a casual stroll to the Negros Oriental State University. By 7.30pm the entire hall in this campus was filled with over 300 students. The GLCC team presented song items while the SMCI team performed a skit with a gospel message.

The hall packed with students at Negros University Campus

Students raising their hands to profess their faith in Jesus

Pastor Mike preached the gospel and over 80-100 students raised their hands to make decisions to accept Jesus as their Saviour.

Among those who raised their hands was a teenage boy in a green colour T shirt and his hair is dyed green and red. Pastor Mike took notice of him and went forward to shake his hand.

Student raising his hand to accept Christ

The session ended at 10pm and I was dead tired when we got back to the hotel. I wanted to download my videos into my laptop as a backup but found out that my laptop charger was not working.
Sigh! I have brought spare parts for everything except my charger and it had to die at the time when I least expected.

Read on

17 July 2009