Our quiet time reading begins with Ephesians 4:7-13. I believe it's saying our job is not just share the gospel, but also to build up the body of Christ. Pray that the CCM here in the Philippines will rely on the grace of God (v7) and ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of impartation. We also need to be motivate to reach the fullness of Christ. We can't just be satisfied where we are, however good 'here' is.
Today is our final collaboration with Hope Manila. We've tackled high school students and college students, now it's time for the universities. We planned to visit the Technological University of the Phillipines (TUP) (I can't remember all the names of the universities but I remember we had to ride the Skyway to access it) in a group, separate into three groups and evangelise in the uni. Unfortunately, we were later informed that we weren't allowed inside. No worries, we can always evax to the students coming in and out of the uni. Unlike Monash Clayton, this uni is very near to nearby coffee shops, so student traffic is high throughout the day, with students coming in and out of uni grounds just to spend time at the coffee shops between lectures.
We split into three groups. Nilla and I were in a group again, together with our student guide. Our first encounter was with two guys happily eating their brunch. We started off pretty well, and were willing to listen to us sharing the A to Z of the Gospel. Turns out they were Catholics. I was about to say good day, when Nilla decided to press on and challenged them whether they had received Christ or not. She wasn't about to leave without making sure. It was a good thing that they were pretty nice guys with lots of free time, 'cos some of the questions we asked them started to make them feel uncomfortable. All the while, I was hoping we weren't overstepping our boundaries. Should we have been adamant to make sure their faith in Jesus was secure? Did we help them cross the line of faith in the end? I wasn't sure. We ended the conversation inviting them for lifegroup, which was happening tonight. We then approached two other guys eating their brunches. One of them was a believer, and his friend wasn't. From what I recalled, because the believer hadn't received Jesus yet, we focused on him rather than his friend with questions about his faith. Then it started to rain, and they both left. I pondered a bit. That was two encounters with Christians that we had that morning, and Nilla's strategy was to keep making sure they put their faith in Christ. I remembered the time when we told that the people here are very eager to listen to missionaries, but very reluctant to commit. I think that was in Nilla's heart, to see that being a predominantly Christian country, should the Christians really have a heart for the Great Commission, the whole country would experience a revival like no other. Instead, the faith has been diluted and people are without conviction. There were beautiful cathedrals all around the city which we were told belonged to cults. Things were serious indeed.
We then headed back to base on the Skyway. We had a simple lunch in a eating place near Hope Church. I remembered that we were supposed to bring a gift that wasn't too expensive to lifegroup later that night, and do a gift exchange, sort of like the ones they do in Christmas office parties. I quickly ran over to a cleverly hidden stationary shop to buy a pen (Seriously, it was hard to find a gift that didn't blew the $1 mark or 13 peso mark).
Our journey then took us to the Technological Institute of the Philippines. It was a cluster of universities located close together, surrounded by a huge wall. We had to take a super-crowded, plenty-of-inappropriate-touching-kind-of-full LRT to the venue. Again, we splitted up into three groups, each to enter a different campus. I think my group got the one that was furthest from the starting point. We walked along the perimeter til we reached the entrance gates. Would you guess it? Again, we were refused entry. That causes some problems. Lala, our student guide from said university, was going to have her lifegroup inside the campus, but we the guests weren't even allowed inside. So, we couldn't join their lifegroup. Sadness to the extreme!
We decided to visit the nearby coffee shops, except there weren't many. This was where we spotted one of the biggest vices of Filipino students: Cyber cafés. Florence later shared she identified a stronghold related to computer games. This culture was not at all conducive for learning, and I can just imagine the students caring more for DoTA than their studies. On the plus side, we did talk to a group of students at a coffee shop. A pleasant conversation, I remember. Most expressed interest in lifegroups and they listened intently as we shared our stories and talked about future careers. That was probably the only encounter we had for that leg of the journey. I was fascinated by the murals on the Great Wall surrounding the campuses, each wall must have been decorated by a student, and there must have been hundreds of sections with individual drawings. We walked past a primary school, and I once again remembered the cyber cafés. Please pray that God will deal with this stronghold over the students in Manila.
The day is not done yet. There still lifegroup to go, plus photos! Will anybody among the people we invited during both evax walks come at all? Stay tuned to hear the next chapter of our Manila mission trip!
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