April 24th, 2005

I’m back! And I just woke up from a 7-hour nap. Haha. I’m dead tonight, don’t think I’ll be able to sleep. :D Now I’m all energized to write all about what happened in the past four days. Or five, counting the night before the trip itself. So here we go. (This is a loooong one. Be ready!)

April 17-18, 2005: the night and morning before
I left our house at around 10:30 pm, after much struggling with fitting all things I have in my bag. We picked up Bea and then headed to Taft where we dropped our things off at Tuesday’s condo. Then Bea and I met up with the Pdo, Marco, Jay, Greg, Rocky and Coach. I ended up playing DOtA for the first time. :p I suck, mehn. It took me about 20 minutes to understand the game and I died like, five times already.

By 2:00 am, we went back to the condo, and then the three of us (Tue, Bea, me) went down to the lobby because Bea and Marco have to talk for the activities in Aurora. Then we went up again, had some girly bonding sessions, took a bath and ended up not sleeping at all. By 5:30 am, we went down to the lobby to wait for the brothers to pick us up. We ended up leaving late, but we got to the Bus Terminal on time to ride the bus. Then it’s on the way to Aurora!

I ended up sleeping half the travel time to Cabanatuan, because I really needed the rest. I was half-paranoid about my period, so a stopover at Double Happiness was much needed. Then we continued with the bus ride, with me still half-asleep until we had to switch buses at Cabanatuan.

On the new bus, I didn’t sleep because it was open air, and the wind was blowing on my face. Bea and I listened to some songs and we kept on singing King of Majesty by Hillsong over and over again, and it was almost like having a worship. The travel time was loooong, and our entertainment there were reading the words painted on the boulders. After another stopover, overheated bus, and more words on the boulders, we finally got to the GK site. Yeahba!

April 18, 2005: The First Day
We were welcomed warmly into the GK site, and we were served scrumptious lunch.  :9 After lunch, Bea and I talked to some kids, and I did some videos, and then we had the first icebreaker activity, a familiar YFC activity – Foot Structure. We ended up breaking one of the main beams of the “session hall” into two while we were doing the last foot structure and so we moved on to the orientation by Sir Ed and the head Architect.

After the short orientation, we set up the tents and then started the long hike to the Municipal Office for the courtesy call to the Mayor. From the Mayor’s office, we got to ride this truck to Barangay Paltic to see the disaster area. Man, the disaster area was heartbreaking, especially when we heard the story. Full grown trees and rocks the size of cars were all over the place – climbing over it reminded me of Wawa Dam at Montalban. Underneath those were the houses of the people, and some believe there are still dead people under all the rubble. We offered a short prayer and I found myself crying while Tuesday led the prayer.

We went back to the GK site afterwards and we prepared for the night. We had the first session with Greg, and while we were having the group discussion, our group saw a shooting star, hence our name, The Chosen Group.  After the session, we went to bed, only to wake up at 1:30 am and all of us were slapping at the mosquitos that were biting us all. Whattanight. 

April 19, 2005: The Build
We started building during the second day. While some people painted houses, I helped with the hollow blocks together with Matet, but after some mishap with it (and running out of hollow blocks and cement), we ended up helping with the digging of the second septic tank (Bea’s group was with the first one, which was already a few feet deep when we started).

I was really proud of our group because we started with nothing at all. And we could really see the team effort of the boys to bring the big rocks – which was later on christened as “Kaloy” because Kaloy was the one who always discovers the big rocks) – out of the hole. Really cool. The motivation of the day was the beach. All of us wanted to go there, and the view from where we were digging didn’t help because it was the beach. Hehe. By the end of the day, the hole was three feet deep, I think.  Coolness.

Before dinner, some of us talked to Lola Virginia, who lived in the place. Then dinner, and that night, we had another session with Kuya Bong, and then slept early again because we were all really tired. The night had less mosquito than the first night because Sir Ed gave us mosquito repellent – as Rocky put it, “you know that green swirly thing?” :p

April 20, 2005: The Beach
I woke up early on the third day because The Chosen Group (our group) was assigned for breakfast. There was some bad news though, our groupmate got some of his things stolen from his tent. It became a big issue, and it was really touching to see the residents of the place being so protective of us, and they were all ready to help us bring back the things that were lost. After serving breakfast, we went back to building (with me doing docu this time), still with the same motivation as yesterday: the beach!  By lunchtime, we stopped building, and got ready to go to the beach.

I didn’t want to swim because I had my period, so when we got to Dingalan Bay, after watching some of the people swim, Bea and I sang some songs in the videoke. Pdo, Coach, Marco and Niki joined us later, but we had to stop because of the “offensiveness” of the videos the machine was showing. And besides, my head was aching already. Hehe.

Bea and I decided to do some rock hunting, and we ended up lying down on the rocks and talking about our lives. I love that girl, really.  I stood up after a while and walked around collecting dry rocks and went back there later, talking with Pdo, Marco, Jay and the others. Then we left, and because of some problems we almost ended up walking all the way back to the site (which was around 6km away ), but God didn’t want us to be too tired that’s why He sent this really big jeep that was enough to accomodate all 40+ of us. God is good!

After the ride, we had the best dinner yet, then had the last two sessions. After which, it was time for Solidarity Night! We laughed our hearts out over the presentations but Kuya Arnold’s poem held us speechless. It was very touching. 

The presentations were over, but the night wasn’t. We headed over to the tent city, where the Outdoor Club members were preparing food and we had some kind of foodfest with them. Yum. More bonding sessions with them until I found myself falling asleep on the rock so I went back to the room where I found Bea and all the freshmen bonding over food. Since most of the other people are sleeping in other places, we had enough room for us to sleep all stretched out.  And no more mosquitos as well! 

April 21, 2005: The Last Day
Everyone woke up late during the last day. After breakfast, we headed off to build again for a while, and then I took some final interviews.

There was a final liturgy and some more sharings, plus some more videos. Come lunch time, and Bea and I took a bath with the freshmen at one of the hoses. Hehe! How fun. We ate lunch, and then met up with the couple coordinator in the area, who was incidentally, Tito Domeng, my old coordinator in YFC High School Based!  Small world! We were prayed over, had some announcements and then got ready to go home.

It was actually a tearful goodbye, especially with the kids. We all want to go back. We said goodbye to everyone and the kids saw us off to the bus. Bea started crying and I started to cry too, and there was this amazingly good feeling inside me that I could not describe. All I know is that God was there. Even if we never had a worship and it wasn’t really a full YFC activity, I knew God made Himself known in the people. How all of us got along, how everyone, even if we’re all so tired already, were still all ready to work to help them. How everyone managed to smile even if we were all under the heat of the sun. How the guys didn’t let the big rocks that they dug up discourage them. How Josh, the guy whose stuff got stolen, didn’t let himself lose his focus from the work. The entire thing had God’s work written all over it, and it was just simply amazing. 

I truly can’t wait to go back there, and do other GK work for the next year. And I just found it amazing that the verse for the day from verseoftheday.com was this:

“Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
- 1 Corinthians 15:58 (NIV)

I was affirmed even more.  I can’t wait to see how His plan will unfold for all of us.  GK777: KASALI AKO DIYAN! Are you ready to join? 

If you read all the way here, I really appreciate it. You deserve a cookie.