First of all, to my dear audience, I apologize profusely for not updating this thing until now. Since I left the Philippines for the US and returned here again, there has been a great deal of flooding, power outages, storms, deaths, trips, and general chaos of the pre-Christmas variety.
The first week after I returned here, which was the first week of December, I became sick and spent the majority of my time in bed, reading. It was a hugely beneficial time for me to give myself permission to rest and soak in good books about the spiritual journey. I am thankful that I could be sick then. And actually, the general look of the Philippines was different when I returned, because while I was home there had been flooding in the Philippines. Turns out when I went back to the Philippines there was great flooding at home.
The next week, December 8-15, I was given an opportunity to do what all the other SM's had been able to do while I was in the States: Cottage Meetings. I spent that week in Pancian.
Pancian... was amazing. On a Sunday night. Josh, Helen and Sammy (Bible Missionary Workers) and I headed out in the tricycle (a motorcycle with a sidecar) for Pancian. It was raining heavily and we went over some mountain-pass type things, so it was a little scary. About an hour and a half later we drove into a sitio (a little group of houses) and parked and went inside the first house. (The houses look simple, with cement block walls and thatched or metal roofs.) There was one lightbulb strung from the ceiling in a main room, then two little bedrooms off of the main room. We sat and shivered in our wetness and picked out a theme song for the week. (Cottage meetings, by the way, are nightly meetings held in someone's house where neighbors and friends and relatives come to hear our message. We did a children's meeting, gave health talks, and Sammy (the head BMW) spoke the Word in Ilocano.) So we picked a theme song, which has become one of my favorite hymns: Blessed Assurance.
As far as sleeping conditions are concerned, Sister Helen and I shared the bed of Benita's daughter, who was away at the time. Poor Sister Helen was worried that we wouldn't both fit because I am so "big" - even though it was a double bed! So I made sure, that night, to sleep on the very edge of the bed and give her the feeling that she had plenty of room. And actually, I enjoy sleeping on the edge of the bed because otherwise I feel claustrophobic. But anyway, the next morning she sternly admonished me to sleep more towards the middle of the bed. She said she felt bad for me all night and didn't sleep much. I laughed. Meanwhile, Josh shared a bed with brother Sammy, who apparently took over the entire bed and forced Josh to spend most of his night on the floor. We had good laughs over it.
On Monday, the first day in Pancian, we went visiting to invite people to attend the meeting. We drove out to a remote location and had to cross on foot about 5 little gushing streams on precarious-looking boards for bridges. The houses were plain gray cement block with thatched roofs. Inside the houses they were decorated with random signs (pepsi, hair products, whatever they found, I guess) and different fabrics hanging to separate rooms. Surprisingly the houses are very clean. These people may be poor but they wash their clothes and keep their houses very clean. These people are also rice farmers. We're not talking the small-town folk with houses close together that sit around all day. In Pancian, (which closer to the western side of the northern tip of Luzon, a beautiful area near the Pacific ocean and close to mountains) the people are mostly farmers. They have lots of fruit like mangos, papayas, coconuts, and a lot of stuff I've never heard of before. And of course they farm rice. But there's something different about the Pancian people. I think because they work hard they are more humble and open to what we have to say. I can't explain it, but I had a sense that these people are more ready for our message than the people in Pagudpud.
Anyway, in one of the country sitios a girl began following me around. She was eleven, and her name was Jasmine. That's about all I could get from her. She didn't say another word to me the entire week. But she stuck close to me the rest of our visit to the different houses and then at the nightly meetings. It was an interesting non-verbal bond.
Tuesday we piled into the tricycle to visit a town further west called Claveria. The ride was absolutely breathtaking. I sat in the front of the sidecar, the air washing over me and tangling my hair. It was cool air and smelled so fresh and we went up and down through the mountains. I found out later that we were on the Pacific ocean, hence the coolness. It was just plain magical. We spent only about an hour and a half in Claveria itself, and the rest of the day was the drive there and back. It was really soul-refreshing because out in Pancian it felt very lonely already. I spent as much time as I could spare reading and praying and writing in my journal. A lot of the lonely times in Pancian (I say lonely because while we did do much visiting, the times inside Benita's house, where we stayed, were empty if we didn't find something to do. I had just come back from the US, and I processed sadness about the move. It was a blessing to be allowed to do this in a faraway place where people wouldn't be bothering me, so to speak, every second.)
Wednesday of Pancian was my favorite day. Everybody but Benita went back to Pagudpud, and I stayed and visited with Benita. She is a former Pentecostal Pastor and it was her house we were staying at. She has quite a story. Her husband was Iglesia ni Cristo (a cult of the Philippines, basically) and he converted to Adventism and she joined him and became a Bible Worker. But her husband used to throw stones at the Pentecostal church while she worshipped. She has (or had) five children., but her eldest son was murdered in Baguio City 2.5 years ago. So she, knowing very little English, spoke in broken English to me, and I spoke in broken Ilocano in return. We both learned lots of Ilocano and English that day. And we had lots of fun laughing and talking and teaching eachother words. I really connected with her. It made all the difference in my time there, just to have connected with somebody. Suddenly I wasn't nearly as lonely.
And of course the most hilarious part was squat pots, which are basically cement toilets at ground level. The Filipinos have what's called the "Filipino squat" that they use everywhere... they have their feet flat and legs apart and they basically just squat and rest like that, so they don't have to sit on the ground. Anyway, the squat comes in handy at these times. The squat pot gets flushed by dipping water into it from a bucket. It gets flushed by maintaining an equilibrium of water or something. I dont really get it. And the thing is, there's a technique to flushing. You can't just pour water into it... it's gotta come in at an angle and at just the right speed. Otherwise you just pour water into it and nothing happens. lol. Also, we take showers in the squat pot rooms. There is a little faucet that you use to re-fill the squat pot flushing bucket, and that same bucket gets used for "bucket showers". Basically you ladle water onto yourself and call it a shower. To make it easier on us (since the Pancian spring water is so cool) we make a "tako tako" or "cup cup", which is a pot of boiling water poured into the bucket with cold water so it's not so cold, especially in the morning.
Thankfully, Benita found me a private CR (bathroom) next to the church that was in the middle of her sitio (group of houses), so I could bathe in somewhat more "private" circumstances. However, one morning I did catch a couple local girls watching me bathing. I felt slightly violated but, you know, it happens.
In Pancian we also did our laundry by hand. This process is actually quite lengthy. First you soak the clothes in water ("to get the smell out" apparently) and then you soak them in soapy water. Then you take a "laundry bar" and rub down the garment in soap, then scrub it against itself. Then you put the soapy piece of clothing in another container. After every piece of clothing is soapy and scrubbed, you empty out the big container of soapy water and put clean water in it. Then the clothes go in and you agitate them and wring them and put them each into the other container. They you repeat the process of dumping soapy water and filling it with fresh water soaking the clothes and agitating, then you repeat it again, so you've rinsed each garment three times. Then you ring out the clothes and shake them out and hang them up to dry (and they will dry stiff of course). So it takes a while to do this.
We also had to build a fire by hand since there was no "gasol" as they call it. So cooking was very primitive. Dishes were washed with laundry soap (at least they used soap; sometimes they don't.)
There was very little light by which to have the cottage meetings. Fortunately, Sammy (our hilarious head BMW who always has a joke up his sleeve) is quite capable of wiring and re-wiring stuff. Their idea of an extension cord is the cut-off end of a cord twisted around another cut-off end of a cord. Sammy ended up burning up a cord and lightbulb thingy so we had to find another cord.
As for the meetings themselves, we started out playing guitar and singing with the kids, who were wonderful. We had 30 kids from all around; most of them came and played with us during the day. They have this incredibly adorable game they play in which they hold out their hand for a hi-5 and say "up here" so you go to give them a hi-5 and they pull their hand away and say "inton bigat" (tomorrow morning). This is their way of saying "too slow." So when we SM's started "inton bigat"-ing them, the kids just laughed and laughed and laughed. So we gave all the kids hi-5's all the time, and soon they began crowding into the house during the day to play with us. But anyway, kids meetings are hilarious because we tell stories - Bible stories - and then Sammy translates them. The thing is, we say a sentence, and Sammy goes on to embellish it further and make it all dramatic so that "Joseph was sold into slavery" becomes "Joseph was drug off shoved into a pit and he was scared and it was dark and cold and his brothers were mean and ..." something like that. It was so much fun.
Then we took turns giving the health lectures, which were based off of the program entitled NEWSTART. I talked about nutrition the first night, and surprisingly there were lots of questions and surprisingly I had the answers, mostly thanks to mom who has taught me quite a bit about nutrition over the years. Then we had a Special Song, always unprepared because, well, who has time to sit and prepare these things? The ilocanos love anything we sing. They love our American voices, and when we invited people to the meetings, the BMW's told the people, "The american missionaries will be singing."
On Friday we woke up early (5 am) skipped breakfast, and went to Pagudpud for a funeral. Two necrologicals had been going on while we were gone, and one of them was finished and it was time for the actual funeral. I got there and was overwhelmingly delighted to take a shower in our dirty cold showers, simply because the water was running and we didn't have to ladle it over our heads. I reveled in the shower, and then immediately was overwhelmed by people asking me to do things for the funeral. These Filipinos, I tell you, they just don't plan stuff like Americans. but I'm getting used to it. So I played for the song service, played for all three Special songs, and then sang and played a special song with one of the relatives of the deceased at the end. They we all marched in the rain to the cemetery to have them remove the casket covering and say goodbye to the body as they place it in the above-ground "tomb". Then we quickly had a group SM meeting and then Josh, Stephen and I took the bus back to Pancion.
Lindsay's parents were here for Christmas. They have been absolute angels. They brought over containers of toys for the kids, as well as muffin mix and some veggie food and all sorts of wonderful things. They bought many things for our little kitchen, and they gave our kitchen a very thorough cleaning. We also had Christmas with them. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The week after Pancian cottage meetings, all of us except Lindsay and her parents went to Filipino campmeeting: the Festival of the Laity in the province of Isabella, in more central Luzon. We left early Wednesday morning.
The drive over: We woke up at 4 am, dead but adrenalized. There were 30+ people crammed into the back of a construction truck. The morning was cold, but we would soon wish we could have it be that way all day. As we started out , most of the luggage was piled in the back of the truck (which had a canvass cover very similar to a wagon train-type thing and we sat on mattresses. It was a very claustrophobic feeling for me. I actually didn't know i was so claustrophobic until i got to the Philippines. But anyway, we kept shifting positions, one person's legs over someone else's, someone's feet losing all sensation of feeling as three people sat on them. It was quite uncomfortable, but hilarious at the same time. We ended up hanging luggage from the bar-frame ceiling of the truck and we even strung a hammock from the ceiling of the truck so one person could lay up there and bounce around. (Woe to those who needed to use the bathroom during such a time). After over 12 hours on the road, we arrived in Isabella by dark that night.
The bathrooms in the dorm were disgusting to the point of nauseation. We were lucky to be able to flush the squat-pot-toilets, and the floor was so filthy that I felt dirty walking through there. We avoided the bathroom as much as possible. Then our dear Pastor Garcia, who made every effort to take care of us, made it so we could use the bathroom of the guys dean - a CR which was very clean with a nice clean squat pot and clean floor. It was wonderful. We felt spoiled.
The girls (Me, Larissa, Tanya, Julievie, and Khay-kay) slept in a tent one of the church members had loaned us. I also had acquired a sleeping mat so that the ground wetness wouldn't quite feel so penetrating. The poor SM guys - they decided to go all natural and create a tent out of canvass and mosquito net. They were wet and cold because Isabella has an unreasonably high dew point. Anything left in open air overnight was soaked by morning.
In Isabella I discovered an odd spiritual gift God has given me for this trip: books. I have lent out many books already, but in Isabella I was amazed that the two local girls who stayed in our tent were also reading my books. One readSearching for A God to Love and the other one read Abba's Child . I realized that I love sharing books, and this is a very real ministry. After all, books have changed my life; why wouldn't they change someone else's?
The campmeeting itself was very revealing. We had wondered, you see, where our local members got all their legalistic twists. Well turns out that it comes straight down from the conference. Let me explain: Pastor Garcia had been promising us a trip to Banaue, where the famous rice terraces are, during our stay in Isabella. However, he discovered that the conference wouldn't let him go with us as they were keeping track of meeting attendance and such. So he arranged for someone else to take us and it was gorgeous. I will include pictures here eventually.
But anyway, every meeting I attended I walked into anticipating good things. I walked out of every meeting frustrated and needing to go off and journal and read. They all said the same thing: The church must be united, we must be winners. blah blah blah. There was not one word uttered about a relationship with Jesus. They even put on a skit involving a huge plane on stage which was the NLM 2007 bound for Heaven (Northern Luzon Mission bound for Heaven, that is). And the skit was supposed to demonstrate the types of people allowed into the kingdom. However, they got way too specific for my comfort. "Have you been a Sabbath School teacher? Have you read your lesson every week and gone to church regularly?" "No." "Sorry. You must stay here." ...that type of thing and more. So you see it was very frustrating. So acts-based. I am a witness to this kind of Adventism being taught somewhere. I know part of it is cultural. But Still.
Isabella was a lot of fun. We all joined in cooking, cleaning, singing and getting to know the Bible Missionary Workers (BMW's) better. One especially rewarding experience is when we American Missionaries (the only ones there, by the way) got up to sing a song. We sang the hymn in English for two verses, then we proceeded to sing the last two verses in Ilocano. As our Ilocano words rang out, the audience began clapping and cheering. They didn't really stop until we finished the song,. Suddenly we had become different in their eyes. We spoke (or sang) their language to them, and afterward we were hounded by people for hours. They never forgot us after that, and kept mentioning it the entire time we remained in Isabella. The NLM treasurer came up to me and said, "They are saying that you speak better ilocano than ilocanos do."
Our Friday trip to Banaue Rice Terraces brought good memories and sadness. On the drive back Sister Helen received two texts: 1) Benita's father-in-law died, and 2) Bobby's wife (a church member) had had a stroke and was in very critical condition. Our ride back to Isabella was somber, and then weird. Sister Benita (I have a special bond with her) was sobbing in the van after hearing the news of her father-in-law, but Helen kept telling Benita to stop crying. I couldn't understand this. THEN they all began singing happy songs, trying, I suppose, to cheer up Benita. It was ridiculous. Perhaps I've become opinionated in my old age or something, but I was pretty upset that they weren't allowing Benita to be upset or cry or grieve. When we got back to camp, she did the supper dishes and nobody offered for her to lie down or anything. She refused when I offered help. Her face stiffened and she said, "It's God's Will." I have come to almost hate that phrase; they say it so much here. It is truly not God's will that these things happen. THAT I do believe.
Bobby, whose wife had had a stroke, took a bus with brother Ely (our head elder at Pagudpud) back to Pagudpud. Bobby didn't know it at the time, but Ely did, that Bobby's wife had already died. Ely lost his own wife to breast cancer, so he was a good person to ride back with Bobby. Poor Bobby, he had a drinking problem. He was always showing up to services with bloodshot eyes and slurred speech. He has two sons who are "not all there" mentally. What happened to his wife is that she had a stroke, then for two days (just after we left for campmeeting) her sons didn't know what to do with her, and there was no way of contacting Bobby at campmeeting. Finally the two sons took her to the clinic but she was severely dehydrated and unconscious. The Mitzelfelts paid for her necrological out of their Christmas money. It was "their gift to eachother".
While I am jumping ahead of the story in this re-telling of events, I am already crying. So I must continue. After we got back to Pagudpud (after a horrendous bus ride that made the trip over look like a breeze) we prepared for the Christmas program and the necros. While we had been gone, Lindsay and her parents had decorated the Pagudpud church with stars strung across the ceiling and ribbons tied to the pews and christmas lights. It was breathtaking. During our Christmas program the power went out for a while, but otherwise it was a happy occasion of songs from children, SM's, local families, women, men, etc. It was well-done and it was a most magical of nights. We were all dressed up with our best clothes.
On Christmas day, we were eager to share gifts with eachother but aware that after opening gifts that evening we would attend Ana's necrological. (Ana is the wife of Bobby). Gift opening was wonderful. Our group was so happy and bonded at that moment. Then Lindsay and I went first to the Necro. As we arrived, the pungent smell of the ever-burning fire made me feel nauseated. They keep a fire going all the time during Necros, and it has a weird smell. Linz and I immediately went in to see Ana. Little Ana. She was exactly 50 years old. She looked like death or hell or something in the casket. I don't know what, but I just lost it right there. It didn't look like her at all! What had they done during imbalming? I don't know, but her skin was gray, not brown, and her face was all flattened out and.... then Bobby stumbled in with bloodshot eyes, a white ribbon tied around his forehead as per custom of Necros. I asked him, "Ania ti Mariknam?" (how are you feeling?) he stared blankly and said, "awan." (I have no feeling.) Then he, in a drunken stupor, sang loudly and off key during our little necro song service. I could not hold back the tears. Was it the smell, Bobby's face, I don't know, but I couldn't keep from crying. Normally I don't cry at necros any more but... this was little Ana and she died so needlessly. There was no kleenex. I sat down and shielded my face with my hand as my eyes and nose ran. It wasn't really embarrassing because it was so pathetic. After other SM's saw the body, they too felt what I felt, and Tanya and I embraced and cried for a while. It's just too real. Death comes too darned easily around here. I was for a moment almost scared of death, as though it could come and steal our lives away or something. It was a foreshadowing of future events.
On Thursday was the funeral for Ana. They didn't have it in the church; instead, we went to Bobby's house and it almost felt like a repeat of the Necrological Linz and I arrived early and sang song service. There was the pungent smoke smell. Then the pastor spoke, they killed a chicken over the coffin, turned it around about three times, and headed to the Catholic church so that they could have her buried in the Catholic cemetery. (we found out that they kill the chicken and get the blood on the coffin and turn it around to confuse the spirits that might return and haunt the house. interesting...)
This last Friday night we put on a Christmas program at Dioalay. It's a sweet little church just 20 minutes down the road from Pagudpud where Helen and Roly, husband and wife, had faithfully worked for many years. We were all very tired on Friday because we had had the funeral and we were drained. But nevertheless we put on our good clothes and went to do a Christmas play at Dioalay. When we got there there was a feeling of alarm in the air. Roly, a beloved Bible Missionary Worker with a tender heart, had a stroke and was paralyzed on his right side. He lay on a wooden bed, slurring his words and staring up at us as though he knew nothing. It was heartbreaking. He has not yet recovered much use of his left arm, although his leg is improving.
We love him very much and continue to visit him and pray around him. It has been two or three days now since the stroke, and we are hoping for a miracle so he can go back to colporteuring. He's such a tenderhearted worker for God.
So, my dear audience, that is where I am at. I must go to supper now.
all my love, especially to the Chehalis Church. And I will be posting pictures at underthemercy.livejournal.com in the near future so please check it out! And please keep us in your prayers!
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