Brady on TREK: Adventures of Holy Week and VBS

It has been exactly 2 weeks since my last post and a lot has happened since then. The week before last was Holy Week, which is a big deal in the largely Catholic nation of the Philippines. A lot of tourists come to Baguio from Manila and other places in the Philippines for a Holy Week holiday, since it is much cooler here. So Baguio was a pretty bustling place for a week and it was interesting to see other Filipinos that are more of toursits than we are. We didn't have any major scheduled events on our itinerary that week because of Holy Week, but it gave us the chance to do a lot of random and awesome things.

On that Monday, we joined the Arcano family at a swimming pool outside of the city. It was super fun spending the day relaxing and having fun with them, and going down a couple of short but fast water slides.

We also spend some time fixing up the shed in the front yard, getting it ready to be a music room. The cement was deteriorating near the base of the walls, so we re-cemented the footings and reframed some of the wall. There is still work to be done, but it was nice to work with our hands and achieve something really practical.

Who needs power tools?

One of the highlights of the week was climbing a mountain before breakfast the day before Good Friday. We got up early and embarked on our quest at 5:30. It really wasn't that intense, considering we were just walking up a gently sloped paved road for 90 minutes, but the view definitely was intense (see below) and at one point, a few of us took a shortcut which involved the use of hands to climb up.

We spent the morning and afternoon of Good Friday at Camp John Hay (a big park) in prayer and fasting with the Arcanos and some others from the church. It was awesome praying for each other, the ministry here, and the city. It made me wonder why we don't do this sort of thing more often.

On Saturday, we went to the Bibak Bible church, which was co-planted by Ashley's grandparents 41 years ago, when they were missionaries in Baguio. It is a little mindblowing that despite not having any input on where in the world we would be headed for TREK, we ended up in the very place where her dad spent part of his childhood. It was missions night at the church, and we sang a song and Ashley shared her testimony. They also did some traditional Igorot dancing, and guess what? they asked us to join them! If you want to watch, click on this link. Good times.

At Bibak Bible Church

To top of an excellent Holy Week, we had a sunrise service at 5:30 am on Easter Sunday where our team led worship.

Just when we thought we were finished with the whole dancing thing after Bibak (I am a Mennonite, after all), we were invited to the 18th birthday party of the granddaughter of a member of the Balacbac church on Tuesday night (who we haven't met). Birthdays are a big deal here, and 18th birthdays especially so. In a traditional 18th birthday, 18 guys and 18 girls all waltz together, then the 18 guys give a rose to the birthday girl and dance with her, and then the 18 girls give her a candle and say a tribute. And wouldn't you know it, they still needed two more guys! So Jonas and I found ourselves waltzing away with 18 different girls (19, counting the birthday girl) in front of 200 people, feeling completely out of place and really tall. But it was actually a really fun evening and a cool insight into Filipino culture, where birthdays seem more like weddings than birthdays.

At the party

Dancing

We also did VBS this week in the community of Ambiong. Despite using the same theme and materials as our last VBS in Camp 7, this one was quite different because instead of 400 students, we had around 30. We were hoping for a few more, but another church was doing a VBS at the same time. The smaller group was kind of nice though, since we felt like we could actually get to know some of the kids and it was more personal. We also did it over 5 mornings, rather than 3 full days like last time. It was a good week, and we get to do it all over again in Balacbac in the upcoming week, so prayer for energy, joy, and a good turnout of exited kids would be appreciated!