Jason Barron
Magundung Umaga, Good Morning. For those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jason and I’m the Intermediates Youth Pastor here at Calvin. At the end of June I went to Manila in the Philippines for just under 3 weeks as part of my youth worker training and also to experience another culture and to try and seek God in that place. Before the trip I had only been as far away as Auckland so needless to say this was a very daunting experience for me and while I was away I will admit that I missed home and my family very much and I’m not just saying that because they are sitting over there.
So I left Home on the 16th June to head to Manila to let this journey begin. Since I have been back I have had a few standard questions so to cover all bases I’ll answer them for you. Yeah it was really hot over, ridiculously hot even. Actually were I stayed they had power, pretty inconsistent power but still power, non-drinkable tap water and a few other things that remaindered me of home.
There were 13 of us from NZ headed over to Manila from different parts of the country. Thankfully we mostly knew each other so it meant that our group de-briefing times could be very honest and real because we knew where we were coming from. The main part of the trip was to experience life in a squatter community and what better way to do that than to live in it. I spent over 2 weeks living in a slum community with a family that I was fostered out too. This is them here. Ate Ledia and Michael. They were amazing people and so very generous in the way they treated me, looked after me and even with the stuff that they gave me out of their own mean was just phenomenal.
The community itself was different than I was expecting. Most so the houses were made of concrete. They were smaller than the 2 corners of the stage here back and like I said before having power surprised me a little but apparently there are a lot of illegal connections and that caused a transformer to blow up which was pretty freaky. There were animals everywhere cats, dogs and rosters. Cock fight was a big thing in the slum community and there were many tied up on the streets. It was sad to see really.
There was something else that I noticed over there. One day a lady came round to the house I was staying in and said to me. “Jason, these are my two nieces and they are both single” and they were both pretty hang out with me, even though they were a little too shy to talk. One of the girls from our group told me that one of the girls kept telling her just before we left how much she was going to miss me. This brought me to the conclusion that girls in NZ aren’t really catching the vision here at.
I was challenged in many different areas during my time in the community. One thing I was challenged on was how much I worry about things coming up. In Matthew 6 Jesus talks about worry what it says at the end of the chapter really stuck out to me. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” I spend roughly 6 months worrying about heading over to Manila and it got a little worse with every day to the point where I wasn’t really functioning properly and went into a super-introverted state and look out if you even talked to me when I went into that state because it was not pretty. To all those that happened to I sincerely apologise for that. But now that I’m back I’m feeling a lot more free and certainly not super-introverted anymore. In fact I’m feeling really good in general which is great and I’m not worrying so much about the future, still thinking about it of course but not worrying all the time like I was. The healing I received from that was great.
There is one parable from the Bible that stuck out to me during my time over there. Marty shared this parable with us 2 weeks ago. We’re all about consistency in the youth team here. Just in case you forgot I’ll refresh your memory
Luke 10:25-37
That parable says so many different things to me and if time allowed I would happily share them but unfortunately it doesn’t. Firstly loving your neighbour as yourself. I was talking with Ate Ledia one day and she said this to me. As long as me, my family and my neighbours are ok then I am happy. I came to realise that she wasn’t just saying this but she lived it out. She was always checking up on the neighbours and they were doing likewise and it wasn’t a chore for them. It was just what they did. Even when it wasn’t easy they stuck with it. Both good and bad. Sometimes I know I find this hard to do myself, to find time in the day to spend time with my family, friends and the youth that I work with when actually I realised that I need to make time for them rather than just find it. Too me if I’m trying to find it then I am not making it as much a priority as it possibly should be. Something that Pastor Paul Loveday said before he left really stuck with me and that was that people are more important than tasks. Don’t get me wrong tasks are important but not as important as people. So I’m trying hard to make more time to spend with the people around me.
On one of the days that some of our host families took us out into the city for a look around. Towards the end of this day we were heading back to catch the train and we had a close to literal Good Samaritan experience. Everyone was walking quickly to catch the train and out of the corner of my eye a saw a lady lying on the ground. I looked back and thought that she didn’t look in good shape at all. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had been taking my queues on how to act from the Filipino’s that were hosting us but they just kept walking. I watched as many Filipino’s walked past and did nothing until 2 of the girls from our group stopped to help her and she was in a bad way. She was unconscious, bleeding a little, obviously malnourished and to top it off she was pregnant. After giving her some water and fanning her to cool her down help came and took her off to the hospital. There are many things that I would have liked to have said after this experience. One being that she was ok now but we never saw her again another would be that I was the one who stepped up and decided to help this woman out, but I wasn’t. I have heard this parable since I a child and every time that I heard it I thought that if that situation arose that I would step up and help that person out. In fact I’m sure I would have heard that at least 2 or 3 times in the last year and thought that but when it came down to putting into action I froze.
One last thought before I finish... I have been challenged in many ways as I said before but one thing that stuck out to me was that as Christians we need to live out the Bible even when it hurts and is inconvenient. It’s easy not to murder someone really but making yourself vulnerable and being totally open to what God might want you to do is not always so easy to do. My challenge to everyone this morning is to seriously think about how we are living out what we are called to do according to the Bible
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