One of my favorite days of the year!
Our day started as normal: wake-up at 5 and have quiet time until 6:15, shower and eat breakfast, and start our group Bible study at 7 - student led. At 8 we started Silent Retreat day. This is where we have 4 hours of alone time with Jesus where we can pray, read, or worship. I headed back to my bedroom, which is nicely air conditioned, and I had a very purposeful time with the Lord. At 10, I met up with Lindie, Josh's wife, and Debbie (Angie's mom) to drive down to Loay to pick up supplies for lunch. With 30 people on the team, food runs out fast. We bought supplies for spaghetti. Filipinos LOVE spaghetti. They add sweet and condensed milk to it though, to make it sweet and creamy. It's REALLY good, but we make it with just the spaghetti sauce. My body needing protein, I went on a hunt for some meat. Behind the stores in Loay there was an open air market selling fruit and vegetables. I thought there must be meat there somewhere. I found it, but it surely wasn't fresh. It was laying on bloodstained, wooden tables out in the open. The people standing near it were waving sticks, with yarn on the end, over the meat, to keep the flies off it. I decided I didn't need meat in the spaghetti that much!
The three of us head back and successfully made spaghetti for 30 people. The team then prepared the camp for the Deaf campers that were coming that night. We made animal balloons for each bunk and signs for the buildings, welcoming them. We then planned out what we were going to be doing for the weekend. Amy Grimm really took charge here with Angie Snyder. It was great. Everything was organized and planned out by the time we left for Tambangan
Elementary.
Tambangan was great. We headed back to finish preparing for the campers, who arrived 15 minutes after we did. We ran outside to greet them and were so excited to see them. Last year there was a lot of opposition from a Catholic teacher and only about 40 students came. This year, Dennis Drake, the founder of IDEA, made it mandatory that all students come to our camp. Yeah, such favor! All 65 students were there and started playing court games like basketball and volleyball. Dinner was supposed to be at 6, so at 6 I went down, and Marita (the cook) was in a frenzy. Her help did not show up and now she and one friend were alone, cooking for 100 people. It looked like they had just started. Lindie and I jumped in slicing huge pieces of pork with dull knives. An hour later we were done, and dinner was being served. Pork with vegetables and pancit... a wonderful meal, I ate a lot of it! I LOVE pancit! Eating though, I realized my hands still smelled like raw pork. I had washed my hands a lot, but the smell stayed until the next morning. It was gross.
That night after dinner, we meet for session. Leoni, a teacher at BDA and a good friend, lead worship. Peter, a father of two children on the trip, lead the session with me interpreting. As all the Deaf students went off to prepare for bed, our team met in the camp kitchen to talk and pray. Joshua and I talked about the spiritual warfare that is always present on these weekends and specifically surrounding these students. We prayed... as we prayed, we heard a continuous ruckous from the boys' dorm. Thinking they were just fooling around, playing, we continued to pray. I knew there were teachers down there that would take care of things. As we finished praying, I headed down there to say good night to the students and the ruckous was continuing from the boys dorm. These dorms have 50 sets of bunkbeds, each dorm (one for boys, one for girls) sleeping 100. Right away I was confronted by a bunch of girls saying there was a snake in the boys' dorm - that's what all the ruckous was about. Yikes! The girls told me they caught it, so assuming it was safe, I walked into the boys' dorm. They had the snake pinned to the ground with a stick, right behind it's head so it couldn't strike and it's body was covered with a black, plastic garbage bag. One of the teachers, Keats, and Chris, an American caught the snake.
The American who caught it was volunteering with IDEA for 10 weeks. His organization funds a lot of IDEA and they had sent him over to interact for 10 weeks. Prior to catching the snake though, one of the IDEA workers had been scratched by the fangs, not bitten. So Chris took the snake up to the house, holding behind its head and further down the body. We showed one of the care takers of the house the snake, who backed away from it, while Keats told him that it was safe, Chris had it paralyzed. It was poisonous. The IDEA worker who had been scraped, needed to go to the hospital, as snakes like this could release a venom that could kill in 30 minutes. Just to be on the safe side, they went off to the hospital. Prior to leaving though, they knew they couldn't enter a hospital with a live snake, nor did Chris want to continue to carry it alive. Keats found large wire cutters in the garage and proceeded to cut the snake in half, to kill it. The next day Keats showed me pictures and the video they took. The snake was about a golf ball size around but over 7 feet long. Gross!
It was a great night overall, but I was also looking forward to the next day with the students.
Our day started as normal: wake-up at 5 and have quiet time until 6:15, shower and eat breakfast, and start our group Bible study at 7 - student led. At 8 we started Silent Retreat day. This is where we have 4 hours of alone time with Jesus where we can pray, read, or worship. I headed back to my bedroom, which is nicely air conditioned, and I had a very purposeful time with the Lord. At 10, I met up with Lindie, Josh's wife, and Debbie (Angie's mom) to drive down to Loay to pick up supplies for lunch. With 30 people on the team, food runs out fast. We bought supplies for spaghetti. Filipinos LOVE spaghetti. They add sweet and condensed milk to it though, to make it sweet and creamy. It's REALLY good, but we make it with just the spaghetti sauce. My body needing protein, I went on a hunt for some meat. Behind the stores in Loay there was an open air market selling fruit and vegetables. I thought there must be meat there somewhere. I found it, but it surely wasn't fresh. It was laying on bloodstained, wooden tables out in the open. The people standing near it were waving sticks, with yarn on the end, over the meat, to keep the flies off it. I decided I didn't need meat in the spaghetti that much!
The three of us head back and successfully made spaghetti for 30 people. The team then prepared the camp for the Deaf campers that were coming that night. We made animal balloons for each bunk and signs for the buildings, welcoming them. We then planned out what we were going to be doing for the weekend. Amy Grimm really took charge here with Angie Snyder. It was great. Everything was organized and planned out by the time we left for Tambangan
Elementary.Tambangan was great. We headed back to finish preparing for the campers, who arrived 15 minutes after we did. We ran outside to greet them and were so excited to see them. Last year there was a lot of opposition from a Catholic teacher and only about 40 students came. This year, Dennis Drake, the founder of IDEA, made it mandatory that all students come to our camp. Yeah, such favor! All 65 students were there and started playing court games like basketball and volleyball. Dinner was supposed to be at 6, so at 6 I went down, and Marita (the cook) was in a frenzy. Her help did not show up and now she and one friend were alone, cooking for 100 people. It looked like they had just started. Lindie and I jumped in slicing huge pieces of pork with dull knives. An hour later we were done, and dinner was being served. Pork with vegetables and pancit... a wonderful meal, I ate a lot of it! I LOVE pancit! Eating though, I realized my hands still smelled like raw pork. I had washed my hands a lot, but the smell stayed until the next morning. It was gross.
That night after dinner, we meet for session. Leoni, a teacher at BDA and a good friend, lead worship. Peter, a father of two children on the trip, lead the session with me interpreting. As all the Deaf students went off to prepare for bed, our team met in the camp kitchen to talk and pray. Joshua and I talked about the spiritual warfare that is always present on these weekends and specifically surrounding these students. We prayed... as we prayed, we heard a continuous ruckous from the boys' dorm. Thinking they were just fooling around, playing, we continued to pray. I knew there were teachers down there that would take care of things. As we finished praying, I headed down there to say good night to the students and the ruckous was continuing from the boys dorm. These dorms have 50 sets of bunkbeds, each dorm (one for boys, one for girls) sleeping 100. Right away I was confronted by a bunch of girls saying there was a snake in the boys' dorm - that's what all the ruckous was about. Yikes! The girls told me they caught it, so assuming it was safe, I walked into the boys' dorm. They had the snake pinned to the ground with a stick, right behind it's head so it couldn't strike and it's body was covered with a black, plastic garbage bag. One of the teachers, Keats, and Chris, an American caught the snake.
The American who caught it was volunteering with IDEA for 10 weeks. His organization funds a lot of IDEA and they had sent him over to interact for 10 weeks. Prior to catching the snake though, one of the IDEA workers had been scratched by the fangs, not bitten. So Chris took the snake up to the house, holding behind its head and further down the body. We showed one of the care takers of the house the snake, who backed away from it, while Keats told him that it was safe, Chris had it paralyzed. It was poisonous. The IDEA worker who had been scraped, needed to go to the hospital, as snakes like this could release a venom that could kill in 30 minutes. Just to be on the safe side, they went off to the hospital. Prior to leaving though, they knew they couldn't enter a hospital with a live snake, nor did Chris want to continue to carry it alive. Keats found large wire cutters in the garage and proceeded to cut the snake in half, to kill it. The next day Keats showed me pictures and the video they took. The snake was about a golf ball size around but over 7 feet long. Gross!
It was a great night overall, but I was also looking forward to the next day with the students.
1 comment:
EEEEEK :( :( glad that nobody were harmed.
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