Philippines Adventure, Pt. 7

I couldn’t post this on the day that I wanted to, so I am actually posting it after having returned from Romblon with my stepbrother, Erik, and after having returned home, well, to my sister’s home in Stillwater. I tried connecting to the Internet via a Bluetooth cell phone, but the wireless was so slow that I couldn’t open my blog page. I could only access my email in HTML format as well. In theory, it is pretty cool that you can use your cell phone to access the Internet, but in reality, I was very annoyed that after 40 minutes, I had only been able to read a few emails a respond to a couple as well. The trip to Romblon was amazing, and I will be sure to post about this trip as well. Actually, the eighth post will accompany this seventh post because I am keeping them separate for clarity’s sake but posting them on the same day. You will have to wait to see, though, for Romblon since I was not able to take them from him. (He will be returning to Baguio for one week in January, so I plan to get the pics from him at that time, which is great because they are wonderful. He has a great camera that even takes underwater pics!)

I am so excited to finally post this entry on Loo (Lo-oh), which is actually situated in a valley and surrounded by the mountains. I did enjoy myself thoroughly on this mission trip, and I know you will enjoy this “brief” entry from me. (I say brief because it is only four pages as opposed to eight pages!) It is one of the most beautiful and simple places I have ever visited. When I arrived back home, I prepared for my trip to Romblon, cleaning my room from top to bottom. I washed all my clothes, including all my sheets and four large fleece blankets by hand. This is good exercise, but man! It tires your muscles like crazy. It was strange to close things up at the Bible school, like closing a place up for the winter or something. I hope that spiders don’t take up residence in my room while I am gone. I left the majority of my clothes and books, etc. I am giving a lot of things to my mom when she comes in April. (She doesn’t know this yet, but if you are reading this, Mom, I appreciate that you will do this for me ☺)

The Christmas party was such fun. It was one of the best Christmas parties I have ever attended or planned for. I prepared three banana cream pies, with fresh tropical bananas and freshly squeezed coconut milk. (These ended up being banana cream puddings with a little slice of piecrust stuck into the top and with pie crumbles also garnishing the top. You have to adapt when the equipment is not up to standard. I thought of all the times my baked goods did not turn out exactly as I planned. I have always managed to adapt my recipes to satisfy my recipients and this was most definitely the case. The pudding was good, but we had eaten so much that I did not quite appreciate the pudding as much as if I had been eating it by itself. Oh, well. This is the simultaneous curse and blessing of Christmas feasts. Everything starts to taste about the same after a little while!) There were fun games, which brought a ton of sidesplitting laughter and even a gift exchange. The gift limit is 100 pesos or $2.25. This can actually buy a nice gift! It would be about the equivalent of a $10 gift in the U.S.

I am going to miss the fact that you can buy a whole meal or enough food to satisfy yourself for less than a dollar. I always end up buying about a dollar’s worth of food in town when I am there. Monday, after my trip to Immigration, I bought a two banana pieces that had been wrapped in wonton wrappers and covered in caramelized sugar. Yum! And, it only cost 15 cents! Amazing! For Americans this is cheap because of the exchange rate, but salaries are also much lower here. I good salary is about $10 per day, but the average is something like $5 per day, so that is why food and commercial goods are so inexpensive.

I hope you enjoy the account of my trip to Loo. I have lots to share about my trip to Romblon. It was quite the adventure. I traveled solo from Baguio City to Carmen, on Tablas Island, which consisted of one bus to Manila, then another bus to Batangas, which is a port city. From Batangas, I took the ferry to Odiongan; then I took a jeepney—full to the brim with people¬—for about 2 and half hours to Carmen, where Erik met me. All in all, the journey took more than a day! Funny how I traveled for more than a day and will have still remained in the same small country, about the size of Arizona. That’s what happens in island travel. I am excited to write all about it. I kept a journal while I was there, so I will tease out some good stories to tell everyone. I brought with me two kilos of peanuts, 30 little rolls called putok, which are quite delicious despite being as hard as rocks, and these vegetables called yakun, which are Japanese vegetables, shaped like a potato and looks like a translucent potato once the skin is removed. They are sweet in a flavor-less sort of way, but they are cheap and healthy. Good for traveling! Now for Loo!!

Keep Loo Looking Green!

Situated in one of the two valleys found in Benguet, the province in which Baguio City is located, Loo is a picturesque-looking small town of maybe 3000 plus inhabitants. (They don’t have handy signs that say “Loo: Population….” Even the inhabitants guess. I suppose it is not really important to know how many people live in your area. I have always been curious, though. I remember reading the population sign for Fort Atkinson and Jefferson every time I entered those towns. I still know that Fort once had 10,213 people; then, when the 2000 census came around, it changed to 12,000 something. I didn’t memorize it that time because I got angry when they changed my lovely sign. You see, I was quite attached to that “10, 213” number. I don’t know what I will do when the census comes around again in 2010! I perish the thought ☺ Now, I don’t know if I can sleep without knowing the population of Fort. What is Jefferson’s? Oh, man, I have lost my touch!)

In order to get to Loo, you must wind and wind along a paved road that was affected by the typhoon, meaning it became one lane in many places. This is not very reassuring when the only other option is to go down the side of the mountain along with the rest of the road. Even the road was very “zig-zag” (the term my students used to describe the condition of the road—you have to appreciate their ability to speak English!) I loved every minute of it. Granted I was a little less thrilled on the way back when I took the small outside chair that had half a back. I did not get sick, but it was a workout to stay in my seat instead of falling into the window or even off my seat! What an adventure. I should not complain or even think it was a challenge because the road and the way to get to Loo has hugely improved in the last couple of years. It used to be a dirt and rock road, so along with the “zig-zag” quality there were bumps and endless dust. We traveled on butter compared to that ☺ I do love modern roads.

So, why were we in Loo? This was our second “mission” trip or outreach. Our first was the one we took to Neuva Ecija in October. However, unlike the newness of the Nueva Ecija trip, the Loo outreach is an annual event because Happy Family Overseas Ministry has its only extension in this city. The church with which we partnered and in whose building we stayed is affiliated with our Bible school. It was great to be a part of a long-standing tradition, maybe 10 years or so. The students were all so excited. For many of them, this was their first time this far north. Remember, very few people travel in the Philippines. They usually do not go far from their province, so it is a big opportunity for these students—and me—to be able to travel to these places to share the Word of God and to help encourage pastors and people living all over.
It rained on our way up to the highest point in that area (7400 ft.) but when we started to descend into the valley, the sun started shining and it was a beautifully cool day. In Loo, it is always cool because of the wind, but the sun really warms up the surroundings pretty quickly. On Saturday, we got a tour of the whole area, along with the opportunity to help the potato farmers for a little while. We prayed for them and their harvest after we dug up a few potatoes. They were very gracious and got a kick out of the fact that we were interested in their work and that it was such a novelty for us. I got burnt that day because I forgot my sunscreen and the sun was so high in the sky. It beat down on us mercilessly and my neck could not resist it. I was so mad at myself since it was the first burn since coming here. I have been very vigilant with my sunscreen and despite the strong sun in many places, I had not bee burnt. Oh, well, I had a nice sunburn line from the camera I was carrying across my chest! It was amusing for the Filipinos to see my burn since they do not really burn. I did discover, though, that although Filipinos don’t get burnt like white people, they do get headaches from the sun, so they are also fastidious in wearing head protection.

When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we set out to prepare for the outreach event. We invited all the townspeople, especially the college students; Benguet State University is located in Loo, so it was a good opportunity to reach out to them for Christ because we were using their auditorium. We set up all the sound equipment and put up the film screen. I had to stand on a stack of chairs in order to pin it up, but one of my students can climb like a monkey, and he just scaled the window and the wall in order to pin the other side of the sheet to the wall. Amazing! On Saturday, I was so thankful that he could climb so proficiently because I unknowingly locked the keys to my room inside of the room. The church is actually an old house that had been built in the 1950’s, and then they converted it into a church about ten years ago. The church is on the bottom level and the pastor and his family stay on the top level. They welcome many people throughout the week, so we were able to stay in one of the rooms. I stayed with the female staff members in a small but pleasant room. (I thought we were going to be sleeping on concrete, so when I saw the bed and the extra blankets, I was so wonderfully surprised and thankful. This is a good tactic when you are traveling: expect the worst; then when you get something better, you can rejoice and when you get exactly what you expected, you are prepared.) Anyway, this student used a wooden plank to climb up the side of the house, and using a long wooden stick, he grabbed the keychain that was lying on the table. Thankfully the keys were on the table, which was close to the window, which was open! The pastor does not have a second copy, and he told me a story of when a family with a small baby was staying in that room, and the father did the exact same thing I did, except there was a sleeping baby in the room. When the baby started to cry, the father tried to enter the room only to realize that the door was locked. They did not have a monkey climber with them, so they had to literally chop down the door. Can you imagine? Oh my goodness!!!

I don’t have much more time to write because I am in the process of getting all the Christmas party decorations done and the cooking done. I made banana cream pies that look great. Sure, it is being served in bowls instead of in a pie plate, but the concept is still good and the taste is going to be even better. (The crusts flopped in the oven because I am using cake pans and not pie plates, so I decided to restructure my idea and to go with the flow. No problem!)
So, I will leave this short entry with a couple of thoughts and observations. I was really blessed to be able to share so much from the Word of God. I was the preacher on Saturday night and Sunday night. I have never preached a sermon in my life, but the pastor asked if I would be willing to share, and I said sure! Even though I speak English, they were able to understand me about as well as when people speak in Tagalog, which is the other national language. We were so remote that many of the people struggled in speaking the national Filipino dialect. In fact, some of my students could not even understand when people started speaking. Can you believe it? We were still in the Philippines, but people couldn’t understand one another. I was really flabbergasted that the dialects are so different that you really cannot understand other dialects from other regions. There are over 200 dialects in the Philippines, but the national dialect is Tagalog and in the region of Benguet, the most commonly spoken language is Ilocano.

I was blessed also to be able to attend a Filipino wedding celebration. In Loo, the tradition is that as long as there is smoke coming from the fires in the field, anyone is welcome to attend and eat the food that has been prepared. So, during the course of the day, lunch is served and whatever food is on hand is given to those who have come. The inner circle then, is the family and the friends of the couple. They stay in the house and get the cake at the end of the meal. We ate pansit, which gets its name from the noodles that are used. These noodles are pan-fried with veggies and pork or chicken. That was served with rice and then big hunks of pork were also distributed. I tried to get away from the pork, but when some well-meaning old man asked me why I didn’t have any meat on my plate, I didn’t want to be rude by saying I am a vegetarian. I took the hunk of meat and tore off a piece like a barbarian and chewed as best I could with my jaw that is more suited to carrots than cooked meat! I dutifully ate a few bites, and then I threw the rest away. That was memorable! We had been invited into the inner circle because of my presence. I was peering over the fence that kept the town from the inner circle of celebrants when the bride and groom noticed me and laughed at the fact that they had a foreigner at their wedding. Then, one of the women who was coordinating the party asked me if I would join them inside. She asked me if I had company. I said I had 19 guests with me! I could see her eyes bulge a little, but instead of retracting the invitation, she welcomed us graciously. The students all sat on the ground, enjoying the food like family members.

The people of Loo are so kind and really welcoming. They are used to being hospitable to other people and seem to value relationships. There is a lot of hardship there as well. The way of life is very difficult and the income is not great. They are all farmers or small commercial vendors, but there is really not much more than a simple life in Loo. Many people take to excessive drinking and some drugs. There are often suicides as well. I was hurt to hear these things because the beauty is astounding. I really could not tear my eyes away from the surrounding vegetable terraces and small mountains that glimmered in the sunlight. That is why we were bring the Word of God to them, to show the people in the town that there is more to life than only farming and having babies and feeling lack. There is so much more abundance that can be found in Christ Jesus, who has already done everything for us. We were there to encourage them to look beyond the troubles of today and to seek instead the peace that Christ gives to those who want eternal life through him. I hope that people were really heartened by our message as much as we were blessed to experience their lives for a short while.

I will resume with my trip to Seoul, South Korea in January. I send you the peace of God and the blessings that come from knowing Jesus Christ. God bless and happy holidays!