Patrick here and I just watned to say that we all have arrived here safely without any hitches and with only one or two stomach upsets. The first party of approx. forty arrived yesterday at the hotel at about 1 pm, the second group (those coming for the megaoutreach of 3 weeks) at 12 midday today.
The first party left Heathrow at 10pm on Wednesday night with a ten-hour flight to Seoul, South Korea. After a four-hour stop-over, which included a therapeutic session of painting a traditional hand-held Korean fan, we flew onto Manila.
By the time we had gone through immigration and had been transported to our hotel, it was past 1 am. Most of us at least appeared to be surprisingly awake at the 5.30 breakfast, which, for some of us, was our first taste of Asia on the ground (some had garlic rice). Our plane to Cagayan de Oro was an hour late and we arrived just after 11am.
Our friends from the local YWAM base were there to meet us in one of the ubiquitous and colourful jeepneys (see posting below for a picture of one and Alison's description of the journeys). They drove us back to our hotel and both yesterday and today we have had some wonderful meals at the YWAM base with the Filipino volunteers who are joining us - succulent and sweet mangoes and bananas accompanied dishes of fried chicken and pork stir-fry.
This morning was a wonderful time of worship and hearing from God and focussing on our purpose for being here: to know God and make Him know. Like Moses, we may feel inadequate and that we do not have much but we know that if we bring to the Lord what we do have, then He will multiply it. Just as Jesus did twice with the loaves and fish.
We are anticipating with much excitement and joy what God is going to do through us this summer.
Thank you for your prayers and messages - please do continue.
Saturday, 30 June 2007
jeepneys!!
Ali P says
hello everyone,
thanks for your comments Elesha and Ilham, we finally made it! some of us got here yesterday and the rest arrived at lunch today. Read the comments from Patrick to catch up with journey so far - but we are all doing well, todays arrivals look very tired, we must have been like that yesterday, but for now we are all adjusting to the time difference quite well.
we have been learning at close range the traditional skills of the local jeepney drivers. every day we go to eat with our local YWAM team at their base, this involves a 10 minute journey on the back of a jeepney, these are small buses with bench seats along each side, where in England 6 people would comfortably sit side by side, on each side, but here it is customary for at least 25 people to fill the inside in any way possible (36 was last years record) people sit on the floor or others laps. there are no windows, which in this heat is a blessing, but when it rains they fold down the plastic sheeting and we boil! today it rained! people locally also like to hang off the back steps, cram at least 4 in the front and sometimes put others on the roof. they get very slippy in the rain, but we won't talk about how big a bruise you might get by testing this theory.
crossing into the oncoming traffic is mostly attempted with a blast of the horn at full speed at any time, 3 lane roads become 5 lane roads and i have seen bicycles without light coming head on at the jeepneys in the dark, none of this phases the drivers, they just carry on getting you from A to B.
we are all very noticable with our pale skin and loads of people shout as we travel along, we are quite conspicuous, so i guess everyone around here knows we've arrived, so when we get out into the communities we will already have made our introductions in part.
for now we must venture outside, in the dark and the rain, to walk back along the main road to get home, lets hope the jeepney drivers notice us, on the way here it was a bit like walking along the M6, so keep us in your prayers!
hello everyone,
thanks for your comments Elesha and Ilham, we finally made it! some of us got here yesterday and the rest arrived at lunch today. Read the comments from Patrick to catch up with journey so far - but we are all doing well, todays arrivals look very tired, we must have been like that yesterday, but for now we are all adjusting to the time difference quite well.
we have been learning at close range the traditional skills of the local jeepney drivers. every day we go to eat with our local YWAM team at their base, this involves a 10 minute journey on the back of a jeepney, these are small buses with bench seats along each side, where in England 6 people would comfortably sit side by side, on each side, but here it is customary for at least 25 people to fill the inside in any way possible (36 was last years record) people sit on the floor or others laps. there are no windows, which in this heat is a blessing, but when it rains they fold down the plastic sheeting and we boil! today it rained! people locally also like to hang off the back steps, cram at least 4 in the front and sometimes put others on the roof. they get very slippy in the rain, but we won't talk about how big a bruise you might get by testing this theory.
crossing into the oncoming traffic is mostly attempted with a blast of the horn at full speed at any time, 3 lane roads become 5 lane roads and i have seen bicycles without light coming head on at the jeepneys in the dark, none of this phases the drivers, they just carry on getting you from A to B.
we are all very noticable with our pale skin and loads of people shout as we travel along, we are quite conspicuous, so i guess everyone around here knows we've arrived, so when we get out into the communities we will already have made our introductions in part.
for now we must venture outside, in the dark and the rain, to walk back along the main road to get home, lets hope the jeepney drivers notice us, on the way here it was a bit like walking along the M6, so keep us in your prayers!
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
time to go!
Ali P says:
well in an hour we will be off on the outreach. The farewells began yesterday, the cleaning is done, the bags are packed and labelled, the reception is full and all we have to do is go.
it's very exciting, the day finally came. i will write again from the other side of the planet once i find the internet cafe. please send comments and keep in touch.
well in an hour we will be off on the outreach. The farewells began yesterday, the cleaning is done, the bags are packed and labelled, the reception is full and all we have to do is go.
it's very exciting, the day finally came. i will write again from the other side of the planet once i find the internet cafe. please send comments and keep in touch.
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
Thank you local Filipino friends
Hi ! My name is Patrick Cronin and I am one of the students in the school (the one with the 'loud' shirt in the photo above taken at a local Filipino church - see below). Please do visit this blog - we are going to do our best to keep it updated with all the things that we see God doing on our journey.
One thing that really touched my heart was when I and a friend, Lucena, who is from the Philippines and is teaching on the Health Care course, went to the Filipino International Christian Fellowship in Birmingham. I went in order to tell them about the work we are going to do in their home country and to establish a link between them and Youth With A Mission.
They surprised me so much when they took a second offering for us and raised £73 which a considerable amount when you see how few adults there were (see photo above).
Lord bless them abundantly !
Logistics of Our Journey to the Philippines
While we are in the Philippines, we apparently will not have internet access where we will be staying, so posting may be sporadic. For your prayers and information, here is our itinerary over the next few days:
Wednesday, June 27th
3:00 p.m. (England time) - Depart The King’s Lodge by bus for a three hour trek to London
Thursday, June 28th
4:20 p.m. - Arrive Seoul, South Korea
8:10 p.m. - Depart Seoul
11:00 p.m. - Arrive Manila, Philippines
Friday, June 29th
8:45 a.m. - Depart Manila
10:00 a.m. - Arrive Cagayan De Oro, Mindanao, Philippines
Noon - Tour, orient ourselves, and pray in Cagayan
7:30 p.m. - Corporate worship
Saturday, June 30th
7:00 a.m. - Breakfast
9:00 a.m. - prayer walks in ministry areas/surrounding villages
1:00 p.m. - woooo, finally free rest time!
7:30 p.m. - corporate worship
On Sunday we will have a dozen or so churches to attend and preach at and then we plan to have a group outing on Monday prior to beginning our full blown ministry on Tuesday, July 3rd.
Every day looks packed from 7 a.m. till 9 p.m, except Sunday evenings and Mondays. Thank you for your prayers and financial support. We are blessed to get to serve God in this way. You are our partners and you minister with and through us. Thank you and praise God!
Saturday, 16 June 2007
God's Infinite Imagination
Who but God could imagine a group of 19 people coming together to form a team of missionaries in the middle of England? He carefully selected 28 total human beings from four different countries (England, Holland, South Korea, and the United States) and called each one of them to a manor house in the middle of several farms. Four married couples and 11 singles, with nine children between three of the couples (ages ranging from 0-11), from different backgrounds and denominations have been unified in Christ and are prepared to travel to Cagayan de Oro on Mindanao in the Philippines. Each one of us has a very unique story and perhaps some of those will be shared here. We also will be sharing our journey in the Philippines.
Together we represent some of the newest YWAM missionaries. We have been blessed to experience our initial training as missionaries at The King's Lodge.
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