Greetings from Davao City!
As Greg mentioned in one of our earlier posts, this week is mainly about learning what MUPT does and how they reach out to the community to spread the word of the Lord. It is important for the team to really understand how they do things in Davao so the team can smoothly transition into the MUPT family – and to also prevent any conflicting ideas between ours and theirs.
That said, we continued our orientation with Cheryl and Claire to talk more about the Filipino culture – I personally found this fun and intriguing because it helped me understand more about myself, why I am who I am. We also had a lesson about the Inside Movement – a movement utilizing Muslims to reach out to other Muslims from the “inside”, if you will. Later that night, we had our first team meeting where we had the opportunity to share what we have been doing and what we have learned/experienced in the comunitywith the rest of the team – this time was especially special because not only did we have the chance to share and get to know one another but the meeting opened our eyes to the truth about Zamboanga, despite what the news says.
~Luke
ADDED (8/15/09)
Claire also brought the team to Bucanna, a urban poor community living on the edge of th beach. For me, this was the community I spent most of my time last year building the youth talent show and formed some relationships with the community leaders, such as Isabella and Julius. It was weird seeing the community/environment in a sense that it was exactly the same when I left back to the states last year. It felt like I had never left in the first place. Even though there were no physical changes, I recognized the change of the people especially some of the community leaders like Isabella (who was the only one there at that time) who seemed to be more confident about her role aa a leader (you can read their transformation story here).
~Greg
Here are some pictures long pastdue:
