onwards to the land of chicken adobo and perfect weather :D

hello all!

AH SO THIS IS IT PEOPLE. the day. that i leave for the philippines. i am on my way. right now. i'm actually in the vancouver airport, blogging, with brady on my left and charis on my right. most of us are on our computers, also blogging.

of course we had to take some self pictures in the airport. good times ;)

guys! this is so exciting! i'm actually leaving to fly across the ocean to another country to which i've never been, seen, or experienced. all in exactly 1 hour 47 minutes.

so what's new with me these days, you may be wondering?

this past week's theme was practical ministry. we talked about things like children's ministry, expectations for ministry/field, public speaking and testimonies, etc.
a definite highlight for me from this past week was our session on musical worship sets/worship leading because my team had the chance to "jam" (play instruments) together. we have some talented people on our team who are capable of sight reading music and making it sound like they've played for years. brady is our unspoken but agreed leader on the guitar; ashley is playing the djembe/hitting anything that makes noise as a drum, charis and jonas sing, and i am on the piano. thankfully, i have played piano for many years, and the worship music i have played at my church is coming back quickly to me.

we have found out a bit more about our ministry in the philippines too! we will be working with the local pastor there, sam, and his family. his church ministry focuses seem to be fairly expected - the community, and his own congregation. we will be working with the youth of the area, doing vbs (vacation Bible school) programs for children, leading womens/mens Bible studies, jonas and brady may be doing some preaching, and we will also be doing what are known as "Bible surveys". these are, to me, a clever way to witness to the local community. we will go door-to-door and ask if the family has a Bible, if yes, what language, what translation, do they have old/new testament, etc. if they don't have one at all, we will offer them one. in any case, we will offer to explain some parts of the Bible that we find important (ie the gospel).

i am excited to begin to work with my team as just the 5 of us. i believe very strongly that God has gifted us each individually and specifically for this time of our lives (and the rest as well, obviously). we fit so well and all get along nicely - this is one of His many gifts to me at this time in my life. i love my team so much, and each of them has already taught me so much about life, love and faith.
we had a footwashing ceremony on friday as teams. that was very meaningful to me as we prayed for each other, repented of sin, and just made relationships with each other right. God is good!
here's a picture of my team - just because i love this picture AND i love my team.

prayer from any of you in regards to health and safety are very welcomed and appreciated. brady and i are both sick, me quite so. the rest of my team will be lucky to not catch this from us, and we have only just begun our just-over-30h traveling adventure.

you will remember my blogging about the banquet we had monday past. well, on tuesday we were to have a bonfire for the evening event, including supper. we all got bundled up and headed out nearly an hour to a small location obviously used for camping. there, the interns gave each team leader a piece of paper with writing on it, and said "see you in a few hours!" literally. we all looked at each other, shocked. i think most of us were bitter for about 5 minutes, then decided that we were going to have a great evening and that we should really cook the 4 cans of beans and half bag of rice we had in order to eat. and that we did.
i had an incredible evening with my friends, just hanging out, telling stories, remembering highlights of trek thus far, and singing songs. at the end, the interns returned, 2.5h later, expecting to find us cold, angry, and downcast. quite the opposite! we had just enjoyed a great evening of laughter and community, paired with stomachs full of delicious-tasting beans-and-rice (we were REALLY hungry by the time it was done, let me tell you! anything would have tasted good at that point). i think they were a bit shocked.
the point of the banquet-bonfire evening sequence was to show us the differences between our culture here in north america and the culture in our assignment location. here, we have leaders, friends, relatives, etc, to support us and help us grow spiritually. there, we will have.. us. and our ministry hosts, hopefully. it's essentially us and Jesus out there, and we will have to learn to self-feed, spiritually, and possibly even physically. what a lesson!
even on their own, though, we had 2 spectacular evenings full of joy and laughter with 9 new friends we have all come to love very much. i can confidently say that these are 2 of my favourite memories of trek.
here is a very bad-quality picture of us at bonfire (sorry :( lighting certainly wasn't the best!)

WELL this post is too long now; thanks for reading this novel folks. i'll try to blog as soon as i can when i get to the philippines, even if it's short.

love you all :)
tejal