Greetings all! It has been quite a month. Our squad landed in the Philippines around new years and spent the month on the Island of Negros which is a smaller island toward the south part of the country. Not many Americans come to the Island we stayed at. In fact we were quite a sight for the people their. They were very excited to see us, many of the people we lived amongst or worked around asked for photos all the time, some even autographs haha. So it was fun being sort of a celebrity for a month and bring joy to these people.
My team specifically was in a more remote part of the Island, a village called Balabag. We stayed in tents and had no electricity. People would often look at us as if we were joking when we said “Could you take us to Balabag?” As we took our routine tricycle ride up the extremely bumpy dirt road into the village. We went out into the villages and formed relationship with people and prayed with them. In the evenings we would always play basketball with many members of the community, which was a lot of fun because I haven’t played basketball in a while and I love it. That is one of the ways the Philippines is similar to America. The people here are very friendly and love the U.S. They even often knew which state I am from which was really refreshing, most other places just ask if your close to NY or LA.
At the end of the month we had a three day event at a University where we got to share the Gospel with people. People gave testimonies, played music, gave messages, did different activities and I even got to give a couple messages. There were a lot of people at the events and we got to pray for many and see people come to Christ.
The Philippines is a very religious country. You see photos of Jesus everywhere or his name on businesses, but for the most part the country has many of the same dysfunctions as any other. I heard over and over that “Everyone here knows about God, but a lot don’t know God.”
So that’s what I feel God taught me a lot, what does it mean to know him? I gave a message on it actually and talked about Matthew 18, receiving God like a child. Instead of trusting in our own performance to be “good enough” for God and heaven, we should trust that even though we aren’t good enough on our, Christ made it so it doesn’t matter, he still loves us and washes us clean.
It’s a lesson that is difficult to learn because grace is so different then everything else we experience in life. But hey that’s where faith comes in, having faith that God loves us even though we don’t deserve it, and living by it. Believing that’s what we were created for, to receive his love and love him back, a relationship.
This month was difficult but wonderful at the same time. We are now currently at “debrief” where the whole squad gets together and goes over some things before we switch continents at the end of the week (Africa). We also just got new teams. Incase you don’t know how that works, our “squad” has about 40 people on it and when we go to countries we often split into smaller teams of 6-7 at different locations. After 4 months teams have been changed around for new experiences, growth ,ect. I have also been asked to be the team leader, which pretty much means I am in charge of talking to host and some other logistical things ect. I am excited and have been learning to take things one day at a time, thank you all for the prayer and support, God bless.
