Start of Year Two

This post is a bit late…I was hopeful about writing an update when I was at home in California during the Christmas Break, but I think I needed more time to reflect and process about the past year in the Philippines. It’s also difficult for me to look back at each semester since I’m reminded of how stressful and challenging it was; this kind of scares me for future semesters, but it does remind me of how faithful God is. 

A few highlights from the last Fall semester…

For our Leadership of Urban Movements class, we had to lead a small group in the hopes that it would multiply. Erika and I decided to lead a weekly small group for the kids in my community. It was fun, but challenging due to our limited Tagalog. Our small groups involved a good number of videos of Bible stories, snacks, as well as a lot of games (which the kids loved). In the end, I'm glad that the kids had fun and were able to be exposed to stories from the Bible (if they weren't already familiar). Another plus was that I got to know many of the kids in my community better and they always greet me with a smile and a "Hello Ate Amanda" whenever they see me around. 

The Community Transformation class involved a project where we had to do a “seed project” (basically a small project in the community that benefits the residents and demonstrates Kingdom values). Erika and I helped organize a disaster preparedness workshop in her community. The community is very prone to bad floods during the rainy season and we thought it’d be good to get some community members together to discuss the issue. We were so grateful that our language teacher, Kuya Mark, agreed to help us lead it. The workshop was pretty simple, as it involved basic discussion of disasters as well as a mapping of the community to note important resources. 

I really enjoyed the Primary Healthcare class for last semester; I also like health-related things in general and so I enjoyed being able to learn more about health concerns and issues among the urban poor through readings, assignments, as well as the projects of my classmates in different countries.  I ended up doing my final project for the course on Childhood Development and it was interesting to see how the kids' backgrounds and upbringing have affected their educational and emotional/social development. The internship at the Gentle Hands orphanage was a bit challenging as it often felt like we were tutoring the kids and playing with them more than we were learning about Healthcare related issues, but I’m very grateful for the time that I was allowed to spend there Gentle Hands is a beautiful organization and the level of care that they give for the kids that they take in is amazing. It’s amazing how God has provided for the organization and how the love of Christ has transformed so many of the kids.  

In short, the Fall semester was exhausting with projects, classes, internship, and doing life in general, but I felt much better emotionally than the previous Summer semester. I’m glad that I did go home for the Christmas break (even though our program director preferred that we didn’t) since I really needed the rest and a conducive study environment to finish up late papers and projects. I really missed burritos and In N Out. And obviously all of my family and friends too : )

This semester, I’ll be taking three more classes:

1) Educational Center Development: A course analyzing schooling in the third world and how urban poor churches can be involved in developing and improving schools in their communities. This course also requires an internship where we’ll intern with a school that serves the urban poor population. 

2) Entrepreneurial and Organizational Leadership: This class is intended to develop entrepreneurial and organizational leadership skills (business-y things) needed for development movements among the urban poor. It’ll build on our Theology of Community Economics course that we took last year. 

3) Research Project/Thesis Part I: We’ll be designing our research proposal on a “missiologically significant issue on behalf of an urban church movement or community organization.” This class will continue next semester, during which we’ll be writing the bulk of our thesis. 

Two new MATUL students, Stephanie and Amanda (we’re not sure if we need nicknames to differentiate us haha), joined us earlier this month. I'm excited for their companionship, and it’s been refreshing to see them be excited about the Philippines & Filipino culture, like we were upon arriving last year. We went (or tried…) to see Pope Francis this past weekend, and it was really wet and crowded. We made an honest effort to see the pope with our own eyeballs, but there were way too many people so we could only see him via one of the screens that were along the road. Definitely a fun adventure though. 

Thanks for reading and I look forward to sharing more of what’s on my heart these final two semesters of MATUL. : )

The new Team Manila! Cohorts 4 & 5