Today was absolutely amazing! We left early this morning for our first assembly of 700 students. When we arrived, school was just beginning so we waited for the principal and the team began to set up. It was evident from the posters and decorations on the wall that they openly believed the Bible and knew God. There were scripture verses on the walls and the children were singing Christian songs to Connie as she was interacting with them. When the principal arrived we talked with her briefly and then finished our setup so that we would be ready for the children when the arrived. Our Philippine team managed the entire assembly, ran the sound and presented all the segments. We were so excited to see that they did everything themselves so that when we leave they will successfully be able to present without our help. We are so proud of them and how quickly they learn and their willingness to serve. They did everything with excellence! After the assembly and the children were dismissed the principal invited us into the teacher’s lounge where they fed us fish balls with sauce, mini bananas, pop cola and butter cream wafers. Since we had missed breakfast this was quite a blessing and a treat.
After leaving the school, our Philippine team took us to a butterfly farm where we were able to relax and enjoy the tranquility of the foliage and the butterflies. We were able to laugh and talk about each other’s families and cultures and learn from each other. We have learned so much from our new- found friends.
At our second assembly, we met over 1300 more friendly children who were eager to learn about kindness. They repeated the object lesson enthusiastically and had so much fun that the heat didn’t bother us, that much! We are so thankful to God for the Philippine team that we worked with because we learned as much from them as we hope they learned from us. They showed us with their actions and words the kindness that we talked about at each of the assemblies.
