Feast of Love

 Our outreach began and ended with a Love Feast  put on by YWAM Montain Province. It amazes me the difference between the first one and the last one.. and all the things that happened in the middle. YWAM MP totally spoiled us with a delicious meal, worship, and dancing-both modern and traditional. Let me tell you somethin'- Filipinos can DANCE.

It's funny looking back- I felt so mesmerized by the culture initially- and was filled with anxiety wondering how I would possibly have the ability to memorize everyone's names for the next time I saw them. God is good- and over the course of the next couple months relationships were built to where struggling to memorize anyone's name was not an issue :-) The YWAM team became like a branch of our family- and at the love feast as we presented our skits and dances and they presented theirs I looked around and couldn't believe that this place that was so foreign at the beginning became like..home. 

Thank you for all the love Mountain Province!

Bella in her tapis woven in nearby Can-oe...bought so she could show her "Lola" Gina at home the traditional dance!

I will have to post the video that goes along with this last photo for you to get the full effect.. all I can say is CDTS leader & student..gone wild! :-) To be continued...

Baguio City

Ahhhh! This is my attempt to catch up on blogging on our outreach-pathetic I know but I need to get it out there simply to arrange my thoughts/pictures/feelings and further processing...and to let you all know what we were up to for the months of September and November. So.. here goes.

We spent 1 day of the trip to Bontoc and 3 days on the trip from Bontoc in Baguio City. Since we took an overnight bus from Manila to Baguio this city was really our first taste of the Philippines.. and it was quite sweet. Baguio is "the big city"- 6 hours from and at the bottom of the mountains that lead to little Bontoc. Upon arrival we were met with scenes of colorful insanely decorated jeepneys, ( military jeeps left behind by the US after WW2 and converted into extra long faux Mercedes works of art.) very *ahem* assertive taxis and they're drivers, cathedrals and houses stacked upon houses decorated with colorful roofs and laundry strung to dry anywhere possible. So much life is in this city.. you could feel it in the (diesel-filled) air. Our team stayed at YWAM Baguio while visiting- a quaint base filled with international goodness... I absolutely love being in environments where there are people from many nations all in one little dining hall :-) This base seems to focus  on Family and Crossroad DTS, so we all felt very welcome there.

Baguio introduced us to bucket showers (yay!), cockroaches and geckos. The first night Bella woke up in the middle of the night to use the CR (comfort room aka bathroom) and there was a large gecko on the wall just chillin'. She FREAKED out screaming because she had never seen one before. (Remember that Arielle, Amy and Marie?!?) I'm happy to report by the end of our trip she was gecko-crazy and wanted to bring them all home with us. I told her customs wouldn't be down with that.
       Baguio was a nice way to begin and end the trip. On our last night there we took a taxi back to the base and the taxi driver was SO friendly and so endeared that we came across the world to visit his country and speak into the lives of the Filipino people. He was so very precious- someone I will remember forever- taxi driver Pedro!