Workers for the Harvest Ministries

Presents

Calvary Community Church

2004-05 Philippines Mission Adventure Overview

February 2005

On Sunday night, December 26^, 2004, while America was getting details on the Tsunamis in Thailand and Sri Lanka; Craig McCord, Rob McCallum, Wes Searcy, and Peter Rivera boarded a plane for the Philippines.

We arrived on 28 December and moved directly to the Workers for the Harvest Children’s Home.  From that day forward, we each spoke in at least one service, and sometimes as many as three.  On the 29^th we spoke at the new church plant in Macondry.  We held a youth camp there with praise and worship, and Bible games for three days to acquaint the community with our organization.  The four of us could only spend one evening there, but it was great!  We used the land already donated for a future church as our venue.

The next day December 30^th was the anniversary for the Workers for the Harvest Children’s Home.  We met for this event under the beautiful meeting area roof that Calvary Church had helped us construct. 

New Roof

We were hoping for up to 200 people, but we were flabbergasted when 400 guests attended.  Praise God!  We were able to feed them all.  All the children were so happy, and those with surviving parents attended the event.  The worship team was awesome!  Students from the Workers for the Harvest Pastors Training Center gave an example of Northern Native Dance.  We were also extremely pleased to have both the regional and local heads of the DSWD in attendance.  Although I was the guest speaker, it was hard for me to do anything but cry and praise God for His faithfulness.

New Year’s Eve was a memorable event for the team.  We participated in several services that day.  After preaching at the Manaquem church we gave a short service at the Good Shepherd Children’s Home dedicating the New Year to God.  From there we conducted our third and final service for the day at the Workers for the Harvest Children’s Home.  There is no better way to start the New Year than in God’s service in the mission field!  Hallelujah!  Those children are so precious.

Each day we were meeting so many people and ministering at so many different places it was becoming a blur.  I met one very old woman at the Children’s Home Anniversary who was so joyous.  She didn’t speak English, but that didn’t stop her from praising God and telling me her testimony at high speed.  I yelled out for an interpreter and half way through her story a pastor came to help me.  She had come from a small isolated village in the mountains, and had come down with Pastor Conrado to attend.  She claimed to have been miraculously healed of  leprosy she then accepted the Lord and moved down the mountain closer to the church of pastor Conrado to be discipled.

By January 2^nd the team was on the road heading North.  It was a beautiful ride up the coast as things became more exotic with every mile.  Our service that night was in the northern most area of La Union, where we had a wonderful service, and blessed fellowship.  We also had a flat tire.  Without the need of a jack Pastor Ventura and I lifted the jeepney while another Pastor put a log underneath and we changed the tire (for the second time) and were back on the road.  Tires are expensive so pastors there buy used ones that would not be allowed on the road here.  The old bald tires they use, I refer to as “balogna skin tires.”  Praise the Lord!  Calvary Community Church contributed funds to replace Pastor Ventura’s tires on the mission jeepney.  But he wanted to get one more trip out of the balogna skins he had already paid for.

With the tire changed we prayed and headed into the mountainous areas of Ilocos Sur.  We had a morning child-dedication service in Butac, and enjoyed playing with all the native children.  Next we headed up the mountain to the fabled Besang Pass where one of the final desperate battles of World War II was fought.   It had been our plan to go the rest of the way up into Biwoc, but the NPA troops had been spotted passing through and we went on to Namita.

Namita was the most beautiful place imaginable.  It was a beautiful terraced rice farming area that was bright green with new crops.  The houses were all bamboo (bahai kubos), and at the edge of the rice fields the mountains rose steeply and dramatically into the clouds thousands of feet above.  We had a beautiful and inspiring service there.  Then it was on down the mountain into Cervantes where we spent the night.  With assurance that the NPA had moved on, we went all the way back up the mountain to hold a service in Biwoc.

Bouncing around inside the jeepney like a bean inside a maraca, the long trip was a tough one.  The jeepney swayed far to one side as it lumbered through deep ruts in the steep dirt road.  It was our third flat (but in a different vehicle this time).  We would have to hike the rest of the steep mountain to Biwoc.  Biwoc is a very poor village, I looked with sadness at their once beautiful cabbage fields that had been destroyed by typhoons.  It is their only income.  The service there was sweet and lengthy, and we passed out blankets made by Calvary’s Blanket ministry.  It was remarkably cold in the mountains this year and the children were suffering, still they greeted us with joy and curiosity.

We next went back down the long bumpy dusty trail to Cervantes for another service.  This was the only day when I became too sick to participate.  I had caught a cold, and I had a pounding headache.  The rest of the team reportedly had a great night as they carried on with out me.  The next day we visited and prayed for a new church plant in Cervantes before heading North to Benguet.  Benguet is covered with wild flowers and tall pine trees.  It looks nothing like the scenes of the Philippines most people think of.  We visited the Lepanto gold mine.  It is run by Americans, and pulls out millions and millions of dollars of gold.  Yet the workers have no masks, or protective equipment, live in shanty towns, and no matter how hard they work they are fired just before the company would have to pay them benefits.  It is so wrong, but they never complain.  They just work while they can, and when they are fired they pack up their families and look for a place to go.

We stayed at the church at Palpaltoogan in Benguet.  The team had a special team time meeting on this occasion.  We prayed that God would give us eyes to see unexpected opportunities for ministry.  That prayer was answered very quickly.  The members of the team had gone to look around the area, and Wes and I were left at the church.  The many children of the mine workers began to take an interest in me and came to investigate.  I started to play with them and soon I had quite a large crowd.  I began to ask God how I could use this opportunity to glorify Him.  Even though my voice is not really designed for singing, and was already ravaged by preaching and my cold, I organized them into two praise and worship groups and we sang every song they knew to Jesus for an hour and a half!  The service that night was beautiful.  The rest of the night was cold, as the wind blew into the spaces between the boards and holes in the windows.

After breakfast we headed into the Mountain Province.  The scenery became still more dramatic.  A thousand or so feet below us as we bounced along the rocky road were scenes unchanged for millennia as water buffalo plowed in flooded rice paddies which were organized into neat squares.  Below them the river raged as the white water slapped against enormous boulders.  Behind the rice paddies the mountains rose almost straight up for thousands of feet and disappeared into the misty shrouds of  fog which were occasionally pierced by liquid shafts of spouting waterfalls plummeting downward.

There are so many pagans in the Mountain Province.  One can look out the window of the church where we had our service and see the hill where pagans still sacrifice to the spirits to this day.  The team gathered there and prayed against the bondage of the spiritual principalities that hold the people there.  Only a few hours walk up the mountain from there I had led two tribal elders to Christ.  Though there is still no church plant there, the two old men are still alive, and continue to follow Christ no matter what their pagan neighbors say.

It was already the 7^th, and we had services to hold, people to pray for, and so many miles to travel before we could be back in Manila to fly out on the 9^th.  It didn’t seem possible.  Our intrepid team pushed ahead to Banaue where we could see the enormous ancient rice terraces through the fog.  We hiked through the misty jungle in a light rain to the village of Ba-E.  When I had been there last a Korean missionary was helping to replace their small grass church with a sturdier structure.  I was so surprised to see the beautiful finished church where we had our service that night.  Although the church is finished, the pastor still lives in a tiny shack made from leftover tin from the church roof with his wife and son.  It is inspiring to see his sacrifice, yet it is so terrible that he has put everything into his work and lives in such a tiny box.

I was able to meet with Mila, the woman that had been so close to death when I prayed for her one year ago.  God not only preserved her life but returned her to fellowship with Himself.  We also got to see the burn victim that I had visited and prayed for over the past three years.  We distributed blankets from Calvary’s (Donna Rineman) blanket ministry, and we were able to give some hand-crank tape players with Bible messages to some of the remote dwellers.

After a wonderful service we hiked out and visited a nearby church and ate lunch before heading back down the mountain and South to Nueva Ecija.  By now we were sick and exhausted.  My cold had moved into my chest, Peter had a serious problem with his lower back, and later that night Rob would be doubled up with stomach cramps and vomiting.  I could not imagine how God could give us grace to preach again that way we all felt.  So we prayed, and God spoke through us with power and clarity.

After the service we drove straight through back to Tarlac.  We were all exhausted.  I stayed up until 3:00 AM packing and preparing for the next day, which was Sunday.  The team split up Sunday, Rob and Peter preached at a church in Balloc, and Wes and I preached at Pastor Fiesta’s church on the outskirts of Camiling.  After some loving farewells, we headed for the Children’s Home to say good bye to all my kids.  Then it was on to the airport in Manila, and back to the U.S. that same night.

This was a tough trip, moving fast, praying with each other, and whoever needed comfort, whether physical or spiritual, distributing blankets, and preaching and edifying the church whenever and wherever we could.  We saw old churches still being used to bring new children into the kingdom, and we saw new churches just getting started filled with the joy of the Lord.  We saw so many things, and were touched in so many ways, and touched others in so many ways.  This trip was an unimaginable blessing.  We will never forget what God did there, or the relationships we made with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Love in Jesus,

Craig McCord

Servant of Christ