Hey all,
Sorry about the lack of updates as of late. It's pretty hard here to use blogger because some internet servers refuse to upload the site. I'm not even sure who actually reads but we'll try to blog as often as we can. (check richie's site as he might update there if blogger isn't working... www.xanga.com/richie_73 )
Since we've gotten here, it has been an absolute whirlwind of activities. We were blessed to attend the 4th annual Missionary's Conference in Pangpanga (sp?) surrounded by 184 fellow full time workers and mission volunteers from all over the world. Father Francis Gustillo gave the first few talks and ironically enough, he is a very close friend of Father Mario from OLGC. Father Mario was here but we were unable to meet with him unfortunately.
The Missionary's Conference revealed to us just how different fellowship is here. They love to sing and dance and come up with random cheers for their respective teams. All in all it was all great fun but you can imagine richie's face when he found out he had to do a choreographed set. We were again, also treated to the talks of Father Gustillo, who is intensely intelligent. He spoke about the Wedding Feast at Cana and how metaphorically, the party running dry is representative of us as a whole. How at times, we can be devoid of the Spirit, just emptied especially after long bouts of going without Him. But Jesus is all too faithful. Whenever we run dry, he provides to the point of overflowing and Father Gustillo reminded us of God's promise of everlasting love and faithfulness. A very enriching retreat indeed.
Quite literally the day after, we started YFC direction setting for the whole world (ps: once we figure out how we're going to upload pictures, we'll show you all we can). Again it was very humbling to be quite literally surrounded by full time workers, all representing a variety of differnet places such as teh Middle East, the Greater Mekong Area (ie: Thailand, Malaysia), Africa, Europe and of course North America. Here they have an abundance of different programs we had never even heard existed such as Oikos, which is a social ministry taking care of environment, Torch, which is for the kids of CFC MCG members and SIGA, which is a ministry that pastors the youth from GK. This was definitely a testament to how different the Philippines is from Canada: no gay marriage, no legal abortion and both are nowhere near becoming legal. We did our best to input some of our concerns such as the left nature of British Columbia and Canada in general, but you can imagine our shock when we found out they were hoping to do CLPs in the Corporate sector of the Philippines!
We just started our SFC training now and today actually, we visited our second GK site, this time participating in a build. The sun is hot and the work is tough but the reward is innumerable. We were treated to a recollection talk from Tony Meloto and he said something very profound: "The love of God and Christ is put to the test when you are called to work for the poor." What he meant was that while it is obviously great to love Christ and His people, but we must remember that Christ's favorite group of people were the poorest of the poor and therefore be quick to serve them. We have found this to be true: while the Philippines is in material poverty, it seems that Canada's spiritual poverty is by far more crippling. We'll elaborate more ont eh talk when we get back but know that we miss you ad love you ever so dearly. And to answer your question, no richie hasn't learned tagalog just yet, and no vanessa hasn't gotten too too dark...yet. Godbless you always.
Richie and Vanessa
Mission's Blog