Matt and Kristin in the Philippines

It seems that lots of churches are generally assembling these days. Well, two anyway. The United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), our hosts here, just finished their General Assembly in a town an hour outside of Davao, where we live. The Presbyterian Church (USA) will begin its Assembly next week in Birmingham, Alabama.

At the UCCP GA, I spent most of my time, along with the other seven interns in the program here, wearing a bright yellow T-shirt and a laminated green conference badge around my neck that identified me as "Secretariat." That's a fancy word that means we run around a lot and don't get enough sleep.

"Their deaths brought to 228 the total number of activists assassinated since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo assumed office in 2001, according to an Inquirer tally.

They also purportedly said the pastor’s daughters were in the military’s order of battle for being alleged NPA supporters."

Still very little sleep, and tomorrow is the final day of the General Assembly, so it will probably be very busy even compared to these days, which is a disturbing thought for us.

We comfort ourselves with chocolate sundaes from Jollibee, which is a Filipino version of McDonalds. I hear there's one in California now, though. Reverse imperialism? Anyway, it's not real ice cream at all, but since it's been so long since we had the real stuff, we can't remember the difference and so it tastes like ice cream to us.

And we're all almost too busy to know what to think or how to feel when we hear of UCCP workers and pastors being killed. Yesterday and the day before, one murder on each day. Yesterday's was someone very well known to the national staff, so there were many tears and sad faces. He was the younger brother of a delegate who just the day before had issued a strongly worded resolution condemning the killing of activists.

We are hard at work, true to our promise to be too busy to email or blog in these weeks. I am making an exception as part of a surprise break, and granting myself a relaxing hour of writing this since I will likely be working for the rest of the day and late into the night.

We have not had a great deal of sleep in the last week. We have had a great deal of coffee instead. I would be spending this time taking a nap if I had not just had my morning coffee which had kicked my brain into gear. This is not to say that I prefer sleep to talking to all of you reading this, but rather to say that in the midst of pushing so hard these days I prefer sleep to just about anything.

The ride by bus and jeepney from Manila to the very mountainous, very northern province of Kalinga is horrible. It was worse going the other way, all in a jeep, all of us with bandannas or shirts tied around our faces to attempt to block the dust from our nostrils as it was lifted from the winding road along the mountainside into the back of the jeep where we sat exhausted from travel and too little sleep. Big drop to river below. Very few guardrails.

And, honestly, we were all tired and ready for a break, and another immersion experience was not what I wanted. I wanted the vacation that was waiting on the other side of this two-day event, with a day on either side for travel.

This is an article I wrote for McCormick Seminary's student newspaper.

Lisa: Perhaps there is no moral to this story.
Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened.
--The Simpsons

My field site supervisor, Mark from the Night Ministry, used to talk about having a certain feeling while being out on the streets of Chicago at night surrounded by people who were so different from him. "What am I doing here?" was his description of this feeling. He found a certain excitement and purpose in this question. If you were asking this question, it meant you were pushing your own boundaries, perhaps because you were following God's calling. The reason he shared this with me was because I felt that way a lot on the streets of Chicago, too.

Yes, it's that time again to crisp our pale skin on a white sand beach, sip mango-banana shakes, and wonder what on earth we're doing in this country.

Of course this will be preceded by a two hour flight to Manila today, a 10-hour bus ride tomorrow to the Cordillera in Northern Luzon for an anniversary celebration/remembrance of a slain activist which ignited the protest movement in that region. Two days of cultural presentations, wild colors, and dialogue on present issues amidst the grandeur of mountains and coldness.

Did I mention the roads en route to this area cliff are so narrow two vehicles can't pass at the same time? And when the occasion to pass arrives, one must reverse to a wide enough space and wait the other vehicle's passage? And that Greyhound-esque buses will be doing this, on the sides of a sheer cliff sans guardrails? This should be exciting (read: terrifying).

"Mama, we're hungry."

But what can mama give when she receives less than 1/3 of her day’s earnings while her employers bask in 2/3 glory?

"Mama, we're hungry, can we have something to eat?"

But what can mama give when she works through the night, body aching, burning, itching until the blazing morning sun rises above the jagged shantytowns. Again, she must seek courage to face another night, possibly a lifetime of this, just to survive.

"Mama, please, we're really hungry, please give us something to eat."

But Mama feels empty. Desperate to love her children and be loved by someone who accepts her for who she is, not what she does.

This, my friends, is Davao's famous durian. Smells like Hell, tastes like Heaven. That's what they say. I happen to disgaree with the latter statement, but apparently after the third time I'll love it. I'm not too hopeful.

Actually, I'm not sure God actually intended this bizarre fruit for human consumption. First, you'll notice it's slightly spiky, no? These are NOT gentle, bend at the touch sort of spikes, these are, WARNING! WARNING! I will pierce your skin, don't mess with me sort of spikes. Then, it takes a machete to hack these suckers open. Surely someone discovered these inanimate porcupines bashed open upon the earth from their long plunge from branches unreachable even at my height.

'Deworm Your Goat'

Just in case you were curious.