Despite the short sleep and tiredness, we were all excited and ready for the day! We were all reunited that morning - the brothers, the sisters & those who arrived at the later time.
We were ALL, together with our luggagesssss squeezed into this big vehicle and off we went to the main church building of “TEAM Ministries International”.
Before we had our breakfast of yummy bread, we had a short sharing from PST Samuel and prayer meeting to get us ready for the days ahead. After which was the moment - entire big group which were divided to 4teams were to be “taken away” by the respective pastors. Some still in Manila, some not.
Being the Team Leader for one of the groups going out of Manila, I was introduced to Pst Nilo, the pastor who will be in-charge of us.
My faith was stretched during my conversation with Pst Nilo and made me realized “Yes! This is what I call mission trip!”. Cause the night before, I’m told that our team probably only need to prepare segments for two service/cgm. But according to Pst Nilo, there was already a youth meeting that particular day.
Our team gathered and we were all very enthusiastic and within 1min, we settled the segments and who to lead. After finalizing the logistic with Jaslin, five of us were the first to leave with Pst Nilo.
First “shocking” scene - without notice, Pst Nilo carried our (heavy) luggages down the looooong stairs. We were overwhelmed by his servanthood. Actually the fact that he came personally to fetch us was amazing cause the place, Batangas that we were going takes 3-4hrs traveling time.
Next that surprised us - he actually prepared a banner to welcome us! Even before we started ministering, we were ministered.
The traveling time was important to us, we were preparing for the segments - to decide on songs for praise and worship, to prepare testimony and to “birth out” sermon.
At the start, Teammate YG actually has a sermon ready but after we talked to Pst Nilo what he think is best for his people, Teammate YG had to change the entire sermon. Being her interpreter, it was also challenging as she only finished writing her sermon when we reached the venue. When we reached the venue, we were overwhelmed again by the youth’s warm welcome!
Due to the MIA of the driver after lunch, we were brought to the venue late thus it left us no time to prepare. But because both Teammate SM and Teammate ML needed time to practice for Praise and Worship, I had to impromptu to lead games. One of the “safer” game to play when you are not prepared - “Charade”! Haha! So very quickly, I came out with the words on the spot. Thank God I did picked up few names on the street during our car ride.
Thank God the response was good. The youth had fun.
And later Pst Nilo commented that it fun and it included both “wordly” and spiritual words for the people to act/guess. I’m encouraged.
The service went on with praise and worship - it was a faith move to choose the songs as then we were unsure what songs they usually sing. Teammate SM and Teammate ML did such a great job!
Next was testimony by Teammate JL. She is a Taiwanese who can understand/speak English but not that fluent those kind. What encouraged me was her faith to take on the challenge eventhough it was last minute. She also prepared her testimony during the car ride. Being her first time sharing in English in front of a crowd, she shared with confidence + sense of humor. Amazingly, her “script” was actually in Chinese but when she read out in English.
After which was the Word of God by Teammate YG with me as the interpreter. I really thank God for His grace!
* I did not really get to translate beforehand.
With just the 3-5mins I had with her, I had her to explain her rough sermon outline and some tough sentences she used. Since she is a Taiwanese, I reminded her not to use too powerful Chinese. Haha!
* I was famous for “speeding” during preaching.
But amazingly this time during my interpretation, I took an effort to slow down and I managed to.
* Actually prayer was my greatest fear.
Is one thing to translate words that are being used daily and words that are used during spiritual content/prayer. I think I only remembered once during prayer she used a chim-chim Chinese phrase that I couldn’t translate, the rest I still managed to do it. *sweat *
Lastly was ministry time. Maybe because of language which they may not understand us at the beginning. We called for ministry time and at the start, none came forward then slowly we saw 5-6 youth leaders upfront. We went ahead to pray. The next thing we realized when we opened our eyes… a pool of youth responded. We did our best to pray for them, especially the youth leaders and the rest we have “no choice” but to say a mass prayer cause we were running out of time.
We stayed around for short fellowship and photossss-takingssss!
Initially the sisters’ room and Teammate SM’s room were just side by side but after Teammate SM’s room encountered some $*%&#*, he changed to one storey below us. We had hard time communicating with the staff thus everything can only be settled through Pst Nilo.
We encountered “eerie” incidents @ Teammate SM’s room… Spiritual warfare? Of course before we continued staying, we prayed together. Haha!
After a short rest, Pst Nilo came by to drive us out for dinner. We very much don’t want to bother Pst Nilo cause we know he is tired, very tired too but we are not encouraged to go out on our own.
Simple dinner over some unique chicken but SUPER DELICIOUS plain white rice! But we had a very fruitful chat with Pst Nilo where he shared with us his life and his ministry that left us “Wow!” and “Woooo!” Before we headed back, we bought simple “grocery”.
Back at the apartment, no rest for us yet as we got to plan for the next day’s programs. 3 Children outreaches and one bible study session - all “last minute” too. By the time we prayed (already in zombie-state) and ended the day, it was also way past midnight. I supposed this is common at mission trip too?
But nevertheless it was a good start to our mission trip and though we were physically tired but we were spiritually excited.
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