Talibon

All of us were very excited to be going to our first school. Talibon Elementary is in northern Bohol, which meant a 3 hour drive each way. The school is a part of the government school system but mostly funded and ran by IDEA. We arrived at the school and saw around 50 Deaf children waving flags in greeting. I'm not sure who was more excited, them or us. We introduced ourselves and started playing a game Fruit Salad. This broke down some walls as I'm sure the Filipino kids were a bit shy and a lot of our team was a little intimidated by the language barrier. It's amazing what a simple, fun game can do to help the interaction. We move to the gym to play dodgeball, tug-of-war, parachute, and open time to play with a small group with balls, rackets, or frisbees.

We head back to the classroom to eat lunch. The school provided mangoes and sticky coconut rice steamed inside banana leaves for lunch. It was so yummy! Most of the students opted for our normal peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

After lunch we showed our dramas. They were still the same Behold the Lamb dance and signing and the King of Hearts. Before and after the dramas a student got up to explain what they meant with me interpreting. I then, went into more depth, only signing, as to what the individual characters did and how Jesus saved them. I was able to correlate it with their lives and the Gospel message. When asking if they wanted to accept Christ, around 20 hands went up! This was amazing and completely overwhelming!!! Usually at the elementary schools we get a few hands, but 20 was about a third of the program! I signed a prayer and had all those students copy me. What a glorious sight to see those hands moving, praying for forgiveness of sins and asking Jesus to be Lord of their lives. One of those who raised her hand and prayed was my sponsor girl, Joselle. She is now in 2nd grade and is 11 years old. I talked with her afterwards and it seemed it was a heart-felt decision she made. I was so excited for her!

We then started crafts. I walked the kids through making salvation bracelets, what each of the colors meant. Black is for sin, red is for Jesus' blood, white is for forgiveness, blue is for baptism, green is for learning, and yellow is for heaven. We also passed out tote bags, made by our local barrio women, that had a notebook, pencil and candy in each one. The kids then used sharpies to color and decorate the bags. Our last craft was a paper chain. We folded each little 2x4" strip of magazine paper and then wove them together to make a really long chain. During this time we passed out ice cream for the students. Normally we make balloon animals with the kids, as we are starting to leave, but the balloons we had were left over from last year and were a bust. They kept popping when trying to blow them up or when making animals.

One of my favorite things about coming to the Philippines is being able to dialogue and visit with my sponsor children. Joselle is one at Talibon that I was able to sit down with and give her a gift. She is very smart and her teachers say she is the top of her class. It is always sad but we said our goodbyes to Talibon.

We drove another 3 hours home to the Sunrise House and was surprised by Joshua, 4 days early! We all went to Along and Inday's house for dinner, in which Inday prepared a feast! She had prepared baked sweet spaghetti, sweetened pork, pork adobo, vinegared fish, rice, fruit salad, meatballs, and a graham cracker and mango dessert. It was SO delicious! Our truck had broken down in the 5 minute drive from the Sunrise House to Along's house so we were walking back home... in the pitch black. We tried to use our camera screen as a flash light. We had a team meeting, had a bit of pool time and then hit the sack... it was a long, yet productive day.