Nehemiah Team Learning the Village Life

After church on Sunday, the church cooked us a nice lunch and sent us on our way with lots of smiles, hugs, and tears.  We arrived at our beachside village about 3:30 pm and were dropped off at the wharf. It was a 150 yard hike along the beach with all of our personal gear, equipment (vbs supplies) and food to the church we will be working with.

Living Conditions:

Our new home is called Every Home Christ Ekklesia Church. It’s probably about 16’x20’, a metal roof, and stick half-walls. It has no door, because one whole end is open. The church has a square table, a small wood pulpit, and about a dozen white plastic chairs. There are two toilets out back with walls and doors made of bamboo and tarp material. You hook the string that hangs from the door to a knot in the wood for a lock. Like our last location, we dip water from a 55 gallon barrel. You scoop water from the barrel into a designated “toilet” bucket, which you then pour into the toilet bowl (no toilet seat of course).

For the last two weeks we have been showering in the same cubicle that the toilet is in. Dungeons is a name one student used to describe the space – I think the name fit. The main goal of showering, outside of trying to rinse off the sweat and get clean, is to not let anything drop in the toilet or on the floor. It’s the same setup here, except that there is an abandoned shack right in the middle of our tent area. It was kind of nasty, and the porch floor is rotted away. It didn’t help things that one of our students went through the floor leaving a big hole. Well, yesterday the truck which takes us to town was late, and we had some time off in the morning. The shack was thoroughly cleaned and tidied up, lines were strung and tarps were cut and hung for privacy, and the porch floor was reinforced with scrap wood we scavenged. And the girls now have The Shower Shack, which is two-stall shower area where the girls can get clean without fear of bugs, nasty floors, or the fragrant toilet!

We are living in the tents we brought, which are sited along the beach on a narrow strip of grass. The lapping waves put us to sleep and are there when we wake in the morning. We cook with a two-burner propane stove set on the table. We pump water through a filter brought from the states (just in case) for drinking; the gravity feed filters we were given plugged quickly and were too slow for our needs.

The village is a made up of maybe 15-20 dwellings, ranging from cinderblock construction to bamboo and woven mats. The villagers are one of the indigenous people groups that are native to Palawan. They subsist mainly on fish, coconuts, and a few grown vegetables. They are friendly and are patient with us loud Americans who have invaded their area.

Ministry:

Our time in San Jose revolved around the morning VBS and afternoon’s traveling to local islands, doing door-to-door evangelism. It’s roughly the same rhythm.  But let’s be honest, door-to-door, cold-call sharing the Four Spiritual Laws is NOT generally approved of any longer in the USA. “Where’s the relationship?” “Where’s the follow-up?” are just a few of the many disapproving questions that surround the use of a tract like the 4-Laws. But we are in the Philippines. We are not here to judge how they do ministry. We are here to be servants, to help them in ministry, and to be an encouragement. And so if they want us to go door-to-door, we’ll do it. However, as you can imagine not all of our student are thrilled with it. So we had a great talk last night and came to the conclusion that if Paul was willing to be beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, rejected, abandoned, and imprisoned for sharing his faith, who were we to hold back or complain about door-to-door outreach? Besides, the Filipino’s in these small villages are super-hospitable; they welcome us in and are willing to listen.  We have six more days of this type of sharing in the surrounding communities.

Conclusion:

All and all the team is doing great! Their morale is high and the team gets along amazingly well, especially given the heat, humidity, and basic living conditions. And we are all surprisingly healthy! There are very few with any stomach issues, and we are all staying hydrated.

Thanks again for all your prayers!

For the Nehemiah Team,

Tom