Day 7: San Fernando

I woke up around 7am and prepped for the day, organizing the suitcases of supplies we would be taking to Lanie and Rex at their Foursquare church, Lord of the Breakthrough, in San Fernando. We got picked up from our villa at 9 by our driver, Nolan, who is a neighbor of Pastor Miranda (he drove from Olongapo to transport us). We arrived around 9:45 at the church/home of Lanie and Rex, and sat down to plan with them for the weekend's activities. We assessed the supplies for games, crafts, and puppet shows, to fill up the day with activity. Bethany and I outlined the schedule for a morning of dance workshops.

Walking around the corner, we got supplies to construct a puppet stage out of PVC pipes. Within an hour, according to Pastor Bob's plans, it was built!

Some of the members of iCare youth from Olongapo came up by bus to join us, arriving around 11:30. Pastor Rex and Lanie's children (Victoria, 6, and Rafael, 10) returned home from school around noon, and for lunch, we ate lumpia (fried egg rolls), rice, and adobo (PB's fave- spiced chicken!). There was even veggie lumpia with squash filling for me, the vegetarian! There are two cute puppies and lots of chickens that provided plenty entertainment!

After lunch, we napped in hammocks and bunks upstairs, lounging around in the heat of the day and singing to the guitar and cajon drum. It was very calm and the air was heavy in the afternoon (even the Filipinos were lethargic and complaining of the heat), so all the fans were humming in the background as well.

Then the neighbor children began to arrive... Teenage/young adult basketball players poured into the church grounds, toting their prized high top shoes to trade out for their sandals, mommies with babies and toddlers. Basketball games were intense. Most spoke Kapapangan, a local dialect, so it was hard to communicate even in Tagalog. As the grade school aged kids came around, I passed out some jump ropes and played various games with the kiddos. We played with puppies and as the kids grew comfortable with me, calling me "auntie," or some even "mommie" (as is Filipino honorific culture toward women of childbearing age), they began hanging all over me, asking to be "manhandled" (flying airplanes, acrobatic tosses or sack-of-potato-style shoulder-toss carriage, piggy backs and shoulder rides, etc). PB talked with pastors and local neighbors/church members, and the teen team members hung out with their friends from the iCare youth group from Olongapo. We played "charades with a twist" with the youth (telephone charades) and card games while snacking on dried fish kabobs, dipped in a sauce.

Later in the evening, we ordered pizzas to share from the Shakey's franchise, Filipino style. All the kids were asking where the rice was to accompany pizza for dinner.

Then we took photos with our puppets from home and Lanie and Rex's as well. It was at that time that we told them all our puppets would be staying at their new home, "Lord of the Breakthrough Foursquare Church." Lanie could not contain her joy. They were ecstatic! The superintendent of the Foursquare churches will be visiting soon, and they wanted to have a nice puppet presentation when he came, Lanie explained to me, so she was especially happy about these new puppet additions!

The day came to an end all too soon. We didn't want our driver from Olongapo, Nolan (one of Pastor Miranda's neighbors), to get back too late since he had to drive us 45 min to our resort and then another hour back to his home, so we said goodnight around 7pm. It was a hard, tearful parting yet again for our teens.

Getting back to the villa, I showered, prepared for the next morning, and fell straight into bed by 9am. Around midnight, I awoke to the sounds of many voices outside my door. I was too sleepy and disoriented to fully comprehend the circumstances, but there were some workers outside my bedroom door, in the bathroom across the hallway, and the kids were gathered round. Elijah told me something that apparently pacified me, so I went back to bed. In the morning, I got the full story. While Bethany was showering, the cold-water faucet somehow came off, thus rendering incapable the shutoff function! While Alora showered, to not waste water, Elijah ran up to the front lodge (where PB was stationed, talking to his wife Pastor Mary, ironically sorting out another water-related issue of the flooding of their house that occurred two days prior; that is another story, but in short, the water valve on their fridge broke overnight and their house was under 3 inches of water by morning!). Anyway, Elijah got some workers called, and by the time he ran back to the villa, the workers were barely showing up... Four of them. Because apparently it takes four Filipino men (at a Chinese establishment) to change a water fixture. Me and my wheezing, rattling lungs were resting in my bed, too exhausted to care.