Youth Discipleship in Lumban

This weekend we visited Lumban Mennonite Bible Church with our dear sister, Reg, whose home church it is. Some of the youth there are participating in a 5 week leadership discipleship course led by Pastor Richard with the 3 last weeks being immersed in various surrounding communities. Darnell and Reg were both asked to lead some sessions on Saturday and then we worshiped with the community Sunday morning. We have recently been appointed (by the Bishops and the youth) as mentors for the Integrated Mennonite Church youth, so this was a great way to join some youth activities and spend time getting to know these great young people. 

As a team building exercise, Reg asked the youth to use fabric to create something, in groups, that would illustrate their strengths and weaknesses. They did a fantastic job (this town is known for making traditional Filipino clothing, so no wonder!) and their thoughts and sharing were very deep, with lots of tears shed about the struggles they face but also a lot of laughter. 

Darnell had the youth act out scenes that showed how loving God means we love others too: faith in action! They had some fun with the scenes and we're thankful we could connect with the youth in Lumban in this way. Our Tagalog is getting better but we still can't fully communicate in Tagalog and sometimes its super frustrating. The youth understood Darnell but its hard to have discussion. And unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the sessions, as I was busy trying to get Makai to sleep. 

About getting Makai to sleep.... normally a very uneventful procedure, but when its 38C outside and your bedroom has no windows or air-conditioning and the power goes out so now fans either (or water to cool down!)... its not fun! The boys finally went to sleep after 10pm when the power came back on and the fans were once again blasting. But it basically just turned our room into a convection oven. We were all seriously sweating all night, despite our fans. Makai's sheet had a watermelon-sized wet spot from his sweaty head :(  Did I mention its "summer" here? Did you know we had winter? Yup, that's when our highs were about 30. Now the highs are 35. Oh dear is right.

So now that "winter" is over, we are sure to be inside during the hottest hours... no shade, no play. 

I'll leave you with a couple photos from our (hot) stopover at Reg's alma mater, University of the Philippines.