Back from the Philippines

Hello all! I'm back!

Actually, I arrived back in Ottawa Sunday June 16. I apologize for not writing earlier. Between jet lag, a busy schedule, some new "news" to process when I got back plus the processing I've begun on all I saw in the Philippines, it's been an interesting week.

My trip was such an incredible experience. The Philippines is a beautiful country, the people are very friendly and hospitable, there was a lot of interesting food, and most importantly, God taught me a lot.

For those of you who haven't heard much about what I was doing, here's a brief summary. I have some friends who are Missionaries with an organization called International Teams (IT). They're leading a program called "Encounter Teams", which is designed to help the team members encounter God, themselves, the world, and their future through an 8-month program in which they visit and get involved in several different types of ministry that International Teams has established around the world. I was invited to visit, encourage, and get involved with the team for a couple of weeks, and joined them in the Philippines for the first 2 weeks of June. While there, the team was focused primarily on working with the urban poor of Manila.

We had the privilege of living in an area of Manila that was not a tourist area. As a result, almost the only white people we saw were each other. As such, while traveling around, spending time in a restaurant or mall, we would tend to get a lot of stares. It was a little odd to be eating a meal while 10 strangers stared at you the whole time. The team leaders had two babies that we sometimes brought along with us. They really got a lot of attention when in public!

We had the opportunity to visit several squatter villages in Manila. These are communities that are built wherever there's space, from wood, steel, sometimes a bit of cement, but basically what ever people can manage to scrounge up for very little or no money, all built very close together, often without plumbing or electricity. The quality of construction generally was below that of our barns or backyard sheds and tree forts. Within Manila, there are hundreds of thousands of people (if not more) that live in these "houses". We had the opportunity to work with the children in a few of the villages, and assist in the construction of an addition to a squatter church in another.

As I work with some of the less fortunate here in Ottawa as well, I found it interesting to compare what I see of the poverty here in Canada with what I saw in the Philippines. Here in Canada, there are a few that live at, or below the level of the poorest in the Philippines, generally due to chemical and/or psychological problems, but beyond those people, the level of poverty in the Philippines was huge compared to here. We are certainly very blessed. I did find it encouraging to witness the hard-working nature of the Filipinos. Even considering the massive level of poverty there, I still see more beggars in one evening in Ottawa than I saw in my entire time in Manila. The poor there seem to all find something to do, I imagine at least partly because they don't have a social safety net like we do to rely on. Mind you, many of the "jobs" people find are ones that we wouldn't dream of having here. We visited one squatter village (Piatas) that was build up against the big city dump. These people would scavenge the garbage that was brought in every day. I saw several guys in a little river that runs right beside the dump cleaning plastic bags others had scavenged in order for them to be clean enough to sell to recyclers.

I was quite challenged and encouraged to see the incredible faith the national missionaries possessed there. On the second Wednesday we were there, International Teams East Asia had a day-long missions conference that they invited us to attend. Pastor Gahni, the director of IT East Asia, spoke in the morning about poverty, and the effect it has had on the Christians of the Philippines. A number of years ago, he had struggled with the question of why God had allowed this Christian nation (the Philippines) to become so incredibly poor. He eventually came to realize that through their poverty, the Filipinos had learned to depend on God far more than believers in richer nations generally ever do. We have a tendency to rely on God only after we have exhausted our own resources, and since we have so much, we tend to rely on God very seldom by comparison. In order to be really used by God however, one needs to be broken to the point where they are able to let God work through them -- something I saw evidenced quite often the lives of many Filipino missionaries. Even with all their poverty, the Philippines has become a great Missionarysending nation. What a challenge for me! How much do I allow God to work through me, to lead me, provide for me, to use me? I had thought I'd been doing relatively well in this area, but have now seen that there is so much more I have to learn there. (Now there's a frightening thought -- that learning process!)

I could go on, but should probably tie this up for now. Perhaps I'll send another in a few weeks, or we'll have a chance to talk more in the coming weeks.

Many of you have asked if I would be taking pictures. Well I have -- 4 rolls, plus I brought back some digital pictures that my friends had taken. Mine are currently out getting developed, but I do hope to be able to share them with you all in the near future. Hopefully next weekend, I'll have some time to put together a web site with some of them, so those of you who I don't have a chance to show the others to will still be able to see them.

I am so thankful for all the prayer that many of you have offered up for me. God is such a great god! He has taught me so much, and still has a lot more to teach me. Hopefully I'll have a chance to slow down a bit in the near future, and do a bunch more processing of all that I saw. I'll look forward to sharing more as God continues to teach me. If you could be praying that God would continue to teach me lots through these experiences I had while away, and others that seem to keep coming my way, I'd be very thankful.

I hope you've been having a great weekend! I'll look forward to telling you more about my trip in the coming weeks!

In His Service,
Steve.