Things are heating up.

I don't want to say 'busy', because it's overused. But, it's late and the Thesaurus is on the top shelf, so for now 'busy' will have to do.

Summer time is peak time! Just when I thought things were slowing down...then this. I'm making the most of every moment because I know that in just 3 months all of it is going to come to an end. I don't want the memories right now. I want the experience.

These past 2 weeks have taken the title of the busiest and most fun weeks since arriving in the Philippines. No one can say that CRBC is not an active church...it's proved it many times since I arrived, but most evidently in these past couple of weeks. Ahh where do I start?

I've certainly come to the Philippines at the right time, it's all happening!! GMA Graduation, DVBS, EAP Camp, Men's Fellowship, More devotions and Bible studies than ever before (I've completely lost track), San Pedro, Youth Fellowship Meeting and a stressful encounter with an all-you-can eat buffet (there's never been so much pressure to make your money's worth). 50% of the way through my missionary journey and it seems as if I've had a lifetime's worth of experience already...try keeping my mouth shut when I return to England and I'm positively sure that I might burst!

"Theology fixes the broken-hearted." - a Pastor Noel Espinosa classic! One of the GMA (Grace Ministerial Aacdemy) graduates explained how he had began the course with the break-up with his girlfriend. To say he was broken-hearted is an understatemt...he was lost. However, a year before graduating from GMA, he and his girlfriend got back together and are to be married next month, to which Pt. Noel Espinosa unhesitatedly replied with the above. Theology solves it all!!
There were 6 GMA students who graduated. To hear their personal testimonies and thankfulness to God was inspiring. Some of them had been studying 4 days a week for 4 years ... on top of their daily duties ...at last! That's how important the advancement of the Gospel is to them. A wake-up call to all those 'sideline' Christians!!

It's swimming season...I'd only just managed to shake the last drops of water from my ears when I was told that we'd be bathing in chlorine once again! It was the CCM outing - heading for Angela, Antipolo. A whole building had been rented out for the day and in order to make it worth the money, we arrived at 7:00am and left at 6:00pm.
I've never been a fan of singing in front of people, so Karaoke is my idea of torture. However, much to the joy of the CCM children, a karaoke jukebox machine had been provided to keep us entertained throughout the day while we weren't swimming. I've never heard a rendition of Westlife's 'You Raise Me Up' quite like I heard on this day. I swear there were some notes sung which were never in the original, but they seemed to enjoy it, so that's what counts, right!? I put some of my swimming coaching experience into practice throughout the day and their idea of saying thank you was to succeed in ripping my t-shirt and try to drown me. Thankfully they didn't quite accomplish the latter, but they were certainly close!! Well, we swam, and ate, and sang and swam until we were worn out...but the next day was the start of DVBS, so no time for recuperation!

How to sum up the DVBS (Daily Vacation Bible School) in a couple of paragraphs?! Well to start with, it was a 5 day program - Monday to Friday. I can't really complain about the early morning starts seeing as 75% of the time I'd been absent due to 'Scriptural Meditation' ;) This is how I attempted to defend myself as an excuse for sleeping through my alarm. Shh!
Our starting number was 150 children, which continued to grow throughout the 5 days. 220 children by Day 4! How amazing is that!!
They were divided into their school grades, i.e. Kindergarten to Grade 7.
8 groups with 8 teachers. It was so good to see such a great turnout for the DVBS. However, all praise must be attributed to the Lord...We'd been reminded in previous weeks by Pastor Noel that it's not all about numbers. There's a difference between fruitfulness and faithfulness.

I alternated between classes throughout the days. I have to say though, the Kindergarten group takes the prize for the most 'interesting' group I observed. Chaos.
It was held in the library and, for the kids, scaling the bookshelves appeared to be a more exciting activity than the memory verses, singing or wordsearches. One of the kids informed us of the importance to keep his bright yellow and blue plaster on his finger "at all times" because the wound beneath was incredibly deep. I think it was a simple paper-cut, but he was convinced that this plaster was his life-support - Protecting life and limb (or finger, in this instance). To cut a long story short. He lost it.
Anarchy broke out!
Suddenly, when accusations began to fly, we felt it was time to step in.
And we all know the best way to solve and bring peace to a riotous bunch of 4 year olds, don't we! Sleeping Lions.
A Primary School teacher classic. Unfortunate to say that the kids saw past our pathetic attempts at keeping them quiet and replied in protest. Either that or many of the 'lions' had insomnia.
No matter how many attempts we made at putting variety into this game, ya know...'sleeping tigers, bears or sharks'...the kids weren't convinced. This is a clever generation I tell ya! - By the 4th day, they gave in. Bliss!

Each day we learnt about the missionary Jim Elliot, read stories about Zacchaeus (who was a very little man, and a very little man was he), the Paralysed Man, the Rich Ruler, etc. The majority of the children who were in attendance at DVBS were from the slum areas or the streets, so what an encouragement it was to see them eagerly listening to the messages each day, hearing about hope for their futures. We had the DVBS awards on Day 5 where each group was asked to put on a short performance for the parents and the rest of the children.
My personal favourite was a reenactment of the Paralysed Man. Look, we were all thinking the same thing during the rehearsals, but actually lowering one of the children through the roof was always going to be slightly ambitious. Nonetheless, they gave it their best shot...and yes, his 4 'friends' did actually drop him through the roof, but the boy who had been playing the part of the paralysed man optimistically stated that his injuries were nothing in comparison with the real paralytic in the passage. What a guy!!

I'm not a fan of musicals. Believe it or not, but Disney Princesses are not my favourite of movies. All the same, I still went.
Faith Academy School is officially the poshest school I have ever seen. They were performing a play of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" and me, Sophie and Angie were given half-price tickets because ate Reah works in the school. I do hate to say it, but it was very impressive! It was just like seeing a west-end performance...the acting, the costumes, the lighting ... you could hardly tell that these were actually children from the school. MJ, a friend from CRBC, told me afterwards "we all know you secretly enjoyed it." Shh!! It was kind of true...in fact, it may well have even rivaled our primary school pantomime 'Jack and the Beanstalk', but not quite!

On Sunday, I'd been asked to preach in the adult Sunday School before the morning service. This is something I've never done properly, so it was a great opportunity, but you can only imagine how nervous I was beforehand! The aircon decided to break within the first 5 minutes that I'd stood up, which meant I was seriously overheating and sweating! I forgot to mention...this was the Tagalog sunday school and seeing as I'm still a novice, I was given a translator for my message. "Magandang Umaga sa inyong lahat..." That was one of my only attempts at speaking Tagalog in the message, then I reverted back to my English...lame I know!
I chose the subject of 'The Wise and the Foolish Builder'. How familiar are you with this parable? I'm sure your answer will be 'very'; however when I was preparing I noticed SO many different sides that I'd never really picked up on before. We can so easily skim across this parable thinking...'what a foolish man. I would never be so stupid as to build my house on sand.' But Jesus is not warning us about something obvious here, this is a mistake that both unbelievers and believers are prone to make. To the foolish man, this seemed like a pretty smart idea at the time, but when the storms of life came he came to a realisation that the ocean-front property might not have been the best idea after all. You see, we put our life in our own hands, neglecting the firm foundation of Jesus Christ. Maybe your house is drifting, maybe you're leaving the windows open, but all the time this is simply letting this world get a foothold. Stand firm under the shelter and on the immovable rock. Jesus Christ!

In the afternoon I commuted to San Pedro with my Filipino partner-in-crime, Saldy (one of the boys from CCM)...as always, a great pleasure to be worshipping in SGCC and having fellowship with Matt after the service.

The EAP (Educational Assistance Program) annual Camp was held last week. I don't want to keep saying the same thing, but I do mean it when I say that it was a real blessing to be volunteering as one of the staff during these 3 days. 77 children, ranging from ages 12-21, attended the camp and it was the most involved I've been in one of the programs since I arrived here in the Phillipines. I'd been given the opportunity to lead the staff devotions in the morning which sounds great before you go to bed, but the energy and enthusiasm has significantly decreased by 5:30am the next morning. My first message was all about witnessing and how we have been 'Saved to Serve' ...not 'saved to observe'. Secondly, my message was from John 10:29 about our assurance as Christians..."No one is able to snatch us from the Father's Hand!"

I was a devotion leader for the Camp which was a great opportunity to share the message of the Bible with some small groups and get them to be more open up and become more interactive. I also helped run the games and give my testimony on the first night! Unfortunately no translator was present and I went into fast-talking English mode, much to the confusion of those gathered. However, some of it must have sunk in as it became one of the main topics in each of the discussion groups.
The theme for the 3 days was 'The Power of the Cross' and Pastor Ismael (one of my favourite pastors ;)) delivered some great messages on this subject.

"Reuben, you may want to turn your bed facing that way. There's a storm coming!"
If only I had listened. Nothing could have prepared me for the next 5 hours. I'm a deep sleeper, but this...this was in a league of its own!
To say that Kuya Tony snores is officially the biggest understatement of all time. It was loud. Very loud. The thing is, it wasn't even frustrating anymore...it was downright hilarious!! 'There's a storm coming'?? Cheers for the heads up!!
I didn't get any sleep that night, and it wasn't even because the aircon was turned up so high that I was shivering under my thin blanket. It was the exaggerated nuclear snore which was taking place on the bed below me. Singing 'With Christ in the vessel we can smile a the storm' as we layed on our bunks just topped it all off.

In the morning Sophie, Angie and myself had been asked...no, *pleaded, to do the aerobics. I decided to volunteer to do the stretches rather than the prancing about...much less embarrassment ;) So after I'd done my bit, I handed over to the 2 girls who performed a terrifying 1980's Jane Fonda style workout (yes, I'm too young to know about this, and no, I've never seen one of them, but I can only imagine). The luminous lycra was the only thing that was missing, but apart from that...spot on!

Well, it's summer, so of course, EAP Camp was filled with plenty of swimming! I helped to lead the memory verse challenges in each session...I'd had training for this through Beach Missions ;) There were also some crazy competitions which took place, for example, the 'Sloth look-a-like competition'. Yeah ask Kuya Tony about that one. It's pretty self-explanatory and equally, pretty pointlessly confusing too!
Aim of the game: Each team is given some face paint, white paint and newspaper. They have 10 minutes to dress up one of their team members to look like a sloth. The most sloth-like human wins.
Purpose of the Game: Nil.

Huddled round the camp fire, toasted marshmallows, guitar playing...ahh!! No camp is complete without moments like these and EAP Camp 2013 was no exception. It was a night to perform, sing, dance, make a fool of yourself, whatever. At one point everyone began chanting for me to get up and sing. I started to laugh. This was mistakedly taken for "Oh guys look, he's cracking. Maybe he's gonna get up and sing now!" They couldn't have been more wrong!
Well saying that, I eventually gave in and belted out a perfect rendition of Aretha Franklin's "Respect". Okay, not quite...well, not at all! But thinking about it now, I regret not doing that! ;)

At the end of the camp there was a reviewing session. Usually when asked 'does anyone have any questions?', you know the score!! We like to keep our lips firmly pressed...but on this occasion. Wow! Many of the teenagers spoke about how convicted they'd felt by the messages and we know for certain that 1 girl (at least) was saved! Please pray for this girl, Hazel, as she seeks to persevere in her faith in spite of her difficult circumstances (her parents are devout Catholics)! Please also pray for the 76 others who heard God's Word. I personally had many encouraging personal conversations with some of the guys. So many of the people are literally so, so close to surrendering their lives to Christ...but as always, it's the distractions when they go back home. Looking 'astig' (cool) is a major hinderance for the guys. Pray!

The next morning I was looking forward to my lie in. Pah!! Erm this is the Philippines...what a crazy thought!! 5:00am - *knock knock* Eurgh!! The Men's Fellowship! (The 'eurgh' was intended for the horrible waking-up process, not the thought of spending a day of fellowship with the men from CRBC). Little did I know that this was to be one of the best days that I've had since being here in the Philippines. After an hour and a half, we arrived in Tanay, Rizal. If you have a good memory, this place will be familiar to those who read my last blog. But we went to a different area this time. It was a province right by a fast-flowing river, palm trees, mangoes, mangoes, mang-- ...sorry! This was the most beautiful place I'd ever been to. When we got there, we all gathered in the hut and I was asked to give a morning Bible message for the 21 men present. I've never felt quite so inexperienced. However, the Lord upheld me and gave me the strength I needed. We then were given another message on 'Manly Dominion' *flexes muscles* Oh yeahh!! Christian Manliness - of course ;) We then went for a prayer time. Such an encouragement to hear these men gathering together, pouring out their hearts in earnest prayer for lost souls and for daily help as they seek to be better husbands, fathers, role models, etc.

After a morning of manliness and adrenaline we headed down to the river like men. Hoorah! Okay, I'll stop that ;) Anyway, when we got to the river, 2 of the hosts showed us a dam where the water is stored. They blocked off the exit so the water could fill up and we could all swim. Sweeet!! It was just like taking a bath, except they forgot to mention that plenty of leeches also enjoyed taking baths there! At one point me and another guy competed to see who could hold their breath for longer and when I came up I felt something on my neck. I put my hand to it and with much resistance and to my disgust, a black leech had been trying to take a swig of my foreign blood. Grossss!! Majorly!

We then moved downstream where there was a hot spring. One of the locals said that I could take a shower there if I wished. So there, on the river, in the bright sun, by the palm trees, I took my first hot shower since I've arrived. It was amazing...3 months and every tap I've turned has been as cold as anything, but here I am, in a province, in the middle of nowhere having my first relaxing, hot shower. Can't beat it!
After a meal which consisted of rice and a bit of chicken and more rice, I went for a rest in the hammock under a mango tree. This is the life I tell ya!! I looked down to see that a brave chicken was pecking away at the remaining bone of the chicken I'd just eaten. What d'you call that...atavism? cannibalism? Well, whatever it was, it made me laugh!
Shortly after this it was time to head back to Cubao...back to the noisy, polluted city. Yay! Oh well, it'd been fun.
Just as we were taking a group picture, a Carabao (the Phillippine national animal - a mix between a cow and a hardcore cow) pulled up. "Hey Joe, you wanna ride my Carabao"
"Err, sure. why not?!"
It was great. Until it started moving!! Just another random, crazy occurrence to add to my list of experiences. Well, it certainly is more fun in the Philippines!

I managed to sneak into both the Men's Fellowship and the Youth Fellowship which was great. 18 is a great age to be!! ;) I'd been looking forward to this Youth Fellowship meeting for a few weeks and it fulfilled my expectations. 160+ young people were in attendance all aged between 11-22! 2 friends of mine, Miro and Gino helped to run the program for the day and lead some pretty awesome games like 'Chain Rock, Paper, Scissors' ...genius! I'll teach it to you all some day! This was a day full of encouragements. Pastor Hubert Haboc preached in the morning about "The Misplaced Joys of Girls and Boys" <<epic title. We then had a question and answer session, group discussions, more games, lunch, performances...a jam-packed 8 hours I tell ya! As always, it was lovely to meet many new friends. I think my Facebook friends list is almost half Pinoy now ;) Thank you for a great day and many memories (If only I could stay till October for the Camp)!!

5 new CCM children have been accepted into the homes this past week. 4 of them are below the age of 4 (aww!! Even better that one of the 2 year old boys is called Nog-Nog) and one is a 12 year old girl!! Pray for their settling in and adjustment to the crazy life of CCM!
You know when you're young and you hear older people saying particular phrases which sound cool like "well, the course of true love never did run smooth" or "beggars can't be choosers"?! I've heard a fair few of these from the 7 and 8 year old kids from the CCM homes.
"Cor, it's hot today..."
"Well Reuben, 'cheaters never prosper'"
"---"
Right, please explain to me how that exactly links.
"Wow, is it that time already?!"
"'Horses for courses', Roo!"
I tried to play along with the joke, "Well, yes 'it takes two to tango', eh? eh?"
Nothing. The 8 year old girl clearly wasn't impressed...I had a lot to learn!!
Apart from a couple of miserable attempts at humour, I feel very welcomed into the CCM family. I'm not a missionary, a visitor or a CCM worker. I'm a climbing frame.
One of my lifetime ambitions = Done!

Iron Man 3. If you haven't seen it, get going. This blog isn't a movie reviewing site, so I won't hark on about how awesome it was, but yeah....I want to be Iron Man. Nuff said! This was followed by a trip to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Not a big fan of these places! Maybe, you'll understand where I'm coming from...they are just full of stress and pressure to make your money's worth. If you don't have more than 5 plates of food, you're a loser! Simple.
Bottom line is, I was a loser that night. Shameful I know. Especially as I'm a representative for England! I'll prove myself some other time.

I can tell, you'll be dying at this point so I won't say much more. But please continue to pray for me as I plan my devotions for the Boys Home and the Girls Home each week. I am currently on my 2nd installment of the life of the missionary Hudson Taylor. I'm sure you're very familiar...if not, try and get yourself a copy of the book: 'the Pigtails and Chopsticks man' - awesome!! This man inspires me more than most. What an incredible life of wholehearted dependence...oh that God would raise up more men like him. Who knows where my life will go? But all I can say is that, if I have half the faith, and experience half the life that Mr. Hudson had, I'll be more than happy!

Well, what can you look forward to hearing about in my next blog. We're currently planning a week's trip to Bohol (look it up on Google...you'll be more than a bit jel).
Forget X-Factor, forget Britain's Got Talent...CCM's Got Talent kicks off tomorrow morning. As they say in the land of the Scottish, "I cannae wait..."
Many more devotions, Bible Study opportunities and CCM outings to come. But please pray most of all as I prepare for Sunday, May 12th. I have been given the opportunity of preaching at Cubao Reformed Baptist Church for their evening service. How unqualified and inexperienced I feel, but God is my helper and I am trusting in Him. Please don't forget me in your personal prayers especially for this occasion :)

It certainly has been a Watermelon Eating, Seed Spitting, Juicy Good Time!!
God bless!