Arrived in the Philippines

Day 1

After some scares about not being able to find PCR test results/insurance forms/other people in the airport, we finally got on the plane, and got to spend 14 hours slowly watching our plane fly at 562 mph across the Pacific ocean. We arrived in Manila, made it through security, and then got to spend what felt like another two hours waiting for our bags. We felt very relieved to be able to leave the airport.

We were then picked up by John Elton and Noli and Gemma Lagasca. It was great to see them all! We finished the day with dinner with the Prime Strata team, a group of Christadelphians who help manage high-rise buildings in Sydney. It was a great first day, and I look forward to the next one!

Day 3

Today we met up with the Australian contingent and all trooped off to Sunday School in the Street, where, rain or shine (and today started off with more rain than shine), sisters Riza and Yen have Sunday School for the kids in the neighborhood, consisting of songs, memory verses, and a Bible lesson.

Sis. Riza is a sister who actually started as a kid attending this Sunday School, who grew up, got baptized, and took over leading it for the next generation. Although her family is not Christadelphian, they are supportive of what she does, and the street where it takes place is actually the street right in front of her home.

Unfortunately, this week, due to the rain, we had a much more compressed Sunday School, where rather than the usual teachers teaching their classes, Bro. John Pople gave a five-minute class, and then we gave the kids items donated by the Australian and American ecclesias, such as t-shirts, bubbles, colored pencils, etc. This, hopefully, conveyed the message that they have a worldwide family who care about them.

Afterwards, we had lunch and a memorial service at the hotel with the Quezon City ecclesia. This was the first time for many of the Quezon City ecclesia to actually see each other since the pandemic started, and there was much rejoicing. After a break, we then had a Sunday School presentation, where the Quezon City Sunday School (distinct from the Sunday School in the Street) sang some songs to us, and recited memory verses. We sang "Happy Birthday" to Sis. Rose Stone from Australia, had some cake, and watched Nat Mansfield give a standard Christadelphian explanation of Ezekiel 38, with lots of Bible-marking involved.

Day 5

We woke up in time to head off to the whale sharks at 6 AM, where we had a lot of fun quite literally swimming around with very happy whale sharks: We then were bussed back to Argao, where we joined the rest of the group at a quite nice hotel. That night though, we had the Argao ecclesia come to the hotel, where we heard a talk by John Pople on Tamar and Rahab. Tomorrow will be a big day of pamphleting and a public lecture on current events.

Day 6

Those of our number who missed the sharks the day before woke up super early to go visit them. We then all split into groups and went leafleting around the town of Argao. This was for a couple of public lectures at 3 PM that afternoon, entitled "Russia's Future Moves", and "The Bigger Picture: The Bible and you". Argao was pretty devastated by the typhoon in December, and there were a number of structures still visibly in ruins from it. Unfortunately, one of them was the venue where we were planning on holding the public lecture, so rather than being an air-conditioned building, it was an outdoor area. Since the projector was very weak, this meant the slides were practically invisible. Turnout was still quite good though, and we had a few visitors from the pamphleting earlier that day, including some vendors from the marketplace.

Afterwards, we had dinner with the Argao ecclesia at the Argao ecclesial hall, including a suckling pig sliced by our Bro. Noli Lagasca. We then finished off the day with a class at the ecclesial hall by Bro. Nat Mansfield on the parable of the 10 virgins. Tomorrow we are waking up early again to catch our flights to Camiguin island, and the Philippine summer Bible school will commence.

Day 8

As it turns out, days at the Philippine Summer Bible School are exhausting, especially when you have time to make up. After breakfast at 7 AM, we had two classes on the readings (one of which I had to give, and spoke way too fast for), speaker introductions, the rules, and two classes by John Pople, all in the main auditorium (which fortunately is reasonably air conditioned).

After that, we were divided into teams for organized sports and the sport of choice turned out to be volleyball. After choir practice was dinner, and after dinner was team games, again using our sports teams. These were actually some fairly good ones that I wrote down for the next time I need to do team games, since they were both fun and not as awkward as some of the team games that have been popular at YOC conferences.

Day 9 

Today continued the usual schedule of breakfast followed by two classes on the readings, and two classes by John Pople. However, today was broken up by the fact we all wore our Camiguin Summer Bible Camp t-shirts, so that we could wear them for the group photo. Of course, once the group photo was taken, people took the opportunity to take many, many other photos.

Philippine travel note: It turns out being a foreigner in the Philippines makes you a very popular target for photos. Lots of people will come up and ask if they can take a photo with you, and sometimes even try to sneak you into a photo they are already taking. It is impossible to photo-bomb - they will immediately go "please, let's take a better photo with you!", and maybe then all want individual selfies along with the foreigner.

After lunch, we had games for the day, which were themed on "The Amazing Race" and involved completing activities at different stations before rushing off to other ones. The station activities were often quite involved, including such things as making bread dough by passing the ingredients between team members.

Also, word of warning: if you are told "you might get wet", what that really means is "you will have to swim through a pool of water in your clothes". I dressed for splashes, not swimming, and my clothes suffered as a result.

Since "The Amazing Race" went way overtime, choir practice was compressed accordingly, and so second choir practice also went way overtime, with us loudly praising God until about 11:30 PM. There may have been some rule about having to be quiet after 10 PM, but we all forgot about it. 

Bro. James Robinson