Chapter 17 - A New Friend Came & Shared Possibilities

                                           Chapter   17

                            A New Friend  Came  & Shared Possibilities 

I arrived home that afternoon from the military  raid and arrests of UIM staff  at Cabudian Baptist Church.  I talked with my wife,  Hesther and shared with  her the experiences we have the last two days. That night was a very restful   It was a  night after a  storm.

I slept well and long. I stayed for a day at home. I want to continue relaxing. The experiences of the raid and arrests, and my signing of a document  “Released Prisoners of War” from the military the day, we were  released and sent home, continue to bother me. For on the records of the military, I and 7 other UIM staffs     were Prisoners of War. 

I felt ashamed,  if later, it will be known that we were Prisoners of War”,  here  at a  detachment in Calinog, Iloilo.

My father, Restituto Bernal, Sr.,  was a prisoner of war, after they  surrendered  in Bukidnon  and sent later to  Capaz, Tarlac. He was   and imprisoned for 2 ½ years. He was a  true Prisoner of War. 

My father-in-law, Childe Alvarez from Bago City, Negros Occ.,  father of Hesther,  was also a Prisoner of War.  He was captured in Southern Luzon,   part of the   Death March from Pangasinan to Capas, Tarlac. He was  imprisoned for more than 3 years.  They were true    Prisoner of War.

But we? We  just attend  a seminar.  Three were arrested and  detained for one night. I and  7 seven  others detained for 1 day. And we were called  “Prisoners of War”.  I have signed a document, a Released Paper.   It really bothered me.

Three  weeks   after that  unfortunate incident of raids and arrests by the military at   Cabudian Baptist Church, I received a telegram from Manila.

It was delivered by RCPI that morning.   It was from a  Pastor in Australia.   And I forgot his name already.  I tried, but cannot recall his name.  It was really unfortunate that the 10 feet flood, carried by Typhoon Frank in June  2008, in our home,  destroyed most of our  important documents and erased lots of it from memory.  

The telegram, I recalled   said.  “Dear Pastor Rudy Bernal. I am from Australia. I  just arrived this week in the Philippines. It was my first time to come to  your country.  I heard from some people at NCCP of your project in Iloilo. I would like to visit your place. Would you invite me to come?  I would like to see what you  were  doing.  And  see the real situations of the people,  how  they   worked and lived in your village.”  The telegram  has his  telephone number and the Hotel  Room Number   in Manila.

Immediately, I called him.  I invited him to come to Iloilo City. I  booked him at Hotel del Rio for   2  days.

The following day, Friday, he arrived at 2:00 PM. I met him at the airport. We proceeded to Hotel del Rio.  He took his  lunch.  Then at 3:00 PM, we left for Calinog. We  rode on  CPBC Pinoy Jeepney. We visited several villages in Calinog. I introduced him to some people in the village of San Julian. 

We proceeded to  Barangay Owak in Calinog, where we have  a small congregation. The church was in the   middle of a farming village - the hills were planted with sugar canes. The  lower portions, were planted with rice.

I learned he was from the Uniting Church of Australia.

In 1984 onward,  the People’s resistance movement against President Ferdinand Marcos martial law regime has become strong.  The villages in Calinog, from both sides of the highway, to Lambunao and Janiuay, have strong  revolutionary movements. The NPA have organized  cadres and fighters in different villages in Calinog,  Lambunao,  Janiuay, Bingawan, Tapaz and Passi and other nearby towns.

Since my new friend  wants to see  the situations of people’s lives, we visited 3 families, around. I did not bring anything for our  food. We will eat what will be  offered us by the family.  Jesus taught us many years ago, that when we visit families, we need not bring our own food.  We must rely on what the family will offer us. 

That’s one wisdom Jesus taught us. Eating with whatever people  can offer a visitor, closes and deepens relationship. I used that too, in my ministry. I eat, whatever, the people offered. I eat it as if,  it  if is the best food, I ever tasted.

The family gave us  boiled balinghoy (cassava) for snack. My new friend  also eat cassava. At 5:00 PM, we attend a prayer meeting. About 8 people were present.  They prepared boiled camote, a root crop  for our second  snack. My friend also  eat camote.  One member led  the  hymn singing.

Then time to share. One shared his thankfulness to God.  For despite the hard situations, his family were all well. He thanked God for his health. He shared his works in the farm. God was nice to  them.  Their rice was now  blooming. And soon will be harvest. 

I interpreted for our visitors.  Then, a woman shared her  life in the village. Hunger and lack of food. They live in a situation where  the people  were  pressured on both sides,  by the the  military and the NPA. She said their food now, were mixture of rice and cassava.  Some times, the eat  only cassava and comote,   root crops.

A pregnant  woman shared  that the   unborn child in her womb  was his 5^tth  child. She was still young. But every year, another  child was  born. Family planning was not yet taught among couples.  This makes life more hard and difficult. She thanked God that all her children, were thin, but alive..

Another  young woman shared, that her  cousin has not come home for several days. There were romors  she had   joined the NPA. 

And, the young girl, fears that she was also  suspected by the military. After they have shared their stories, I asked the Australian  Pastor if he have some questions.  He thank all of us for sharing our the stories of our lives. But he said,  what he saw and heard,  have given him  fair  knowledge of the situations. We closed the session with a prayer.

Then our visitor said, he would like to  visit  the  Comfort Room. I told him to urinate beside the tree. But he will not. He would like to use the CR.  The CR was  near the banana plants.  The family put two four   woods,  over the Pit, which  was their  CR.  

The family used  that as their toilet. There  was 4  sacks around,  hanged to make it a  bit private, while they were doing their things. Our friends, after urinating returned to the group. 

On the way back, I showed him the new cement urinal.  This urinals was the project of the  community assisted by UIM. Soon, the community  will have sanitary toilets. It was provided by the government.  

In a few week time, some 20 urinals will be installed by them.  UIM will assist snacks of those working. Then no more fowl odor on the toilets. The urinals will be “water sealed.” Families will  worked together to build their  toilets. 

He thank God for the  opportunity to learn life here in  a  village.  Then, we went to another home. The home,  where we will have our supper and where we will slept  that night.  It was now 7:30 PM.

The  husband and wife of the family,  have cooked two  chickens for supper.  They  cooked the  chickens for us. I told our visitors, that  last year, we  dispersed 5 female chickens  and 1 roaster. And the chickens have lay  eggs and have chicks that have grown.  

There  were lots of chickens walking  around. About 1 ½  meters away from their house, were  sugar cane plantations. Part of the training, was immunizations of the chickens against  Avian Pests, a deadly chicken disease in the villages.

The chickens  lived mostly under the sugar canes and found   their foods there – insects,  young grasses and grass seeds. He appreciated, the simple things we’ve  done to improve the lives  of the village people by caring some  chickens. I told  him, in  Calinog, we were working in some  22  villages that year.  But we have only little things.   In Calinog, there were more than 70 barangays/villages going up the mountains. And we touched only 22 villages in two years time.

At 8:00 PM, we have  supper. We have chicken with soap and young boiled  papayas. Because we have a  foreign visitor, the family cooked rice that evening. It was not mixed with corn.  We eat together.  After supper, we  continued with our sharing   until 10:00 PM.  Then  we prepared  to slept.

I told our visitor,  to  rest well that night. Tomorrow,  we have  a scheduled seminar in  Bingawan, where some 40 participants will be coming for a 2- days seminar on  labor education 7 organzing.

We slept. I stayed in a small room with our visitor. At about 2:00 AM, our visitor  woke  me up. He suffers lose vowel movements. And his stomach was aching. 

I accompanied him to the toilet. It was an Open Pit. There were 4 woods that were placed in the middle of the pit,  where  the persons sat while doing the thing. 

He sat on the small woods.  He have a  small flash light.  He lighted his way. He lighted the “Open Pit”.  And there he saw maggots, thousands moving.  He asked me what were  those things moving down. I told him, they were maggots.  They were  inside the  “Open Pit” toilets.

Then we went back  to the house.  I think, eating boiled   cassava and camote affected his digestions.   He has not eaten this kind of food  for  years.   Perhaps,  his stomach  found   hard to digest  cassava and  camote.

The father of the family made  a concoctions for loss vowel movements. He got  several pieces of  garlic cob  and ginder. It was boiled. Then a spoonful of honey was dropped into the glass.  He  made our visitor drink.  After about 30 minutes he was relieved. And he has a good slept until  morning.

That morning, I told our visitor,  honey was produced in the home. There were lots of Honey Bees, called  “Kihot” living and making honey inside the bamboo tubes. The bamboo tubes were made for the Honey Bees to live. This was their factory to make honey.

I showed our friend, the Kihot, or Honey Bees,  inside the bamboo tubes, where honey were produced by the honey bees.  The  Honey Bees, were natural to many families. It’s part of the lives of some families.  They just get a bamboo tube, with live Honey Bees and brought  home.  And soon, they have a community of Honey Bees, making honey for the family.

UIM also taught some  practical technology  on health care, for stomack aches, head-aches,  vomiting and ways to relieve high blood pressures. These were  taught during the seminars by UIM and the New Frontier Ministries.  Some simple way to relieve pains, which were  scientific. Those were the ways to heal some sickness, by those who have no money to buy medicine. 

We have breakfast. Our landlady, borrowed a cup of rice from the neighbour. She made  “linugaw”,  a rice soup. She made our friend  rice  soap for  breakfast, mixed only with  pintch of salt.  No sugar. And it was good. Then, we went to  a church in Bingawan,  in  another municipality  where we attended the labor education seminar. After the introdcutions and  sharings from the participants and after some questions,  we  left for Iloilo City.

But, along the way,  I  remembered, in one village in Bingawan, we have a  project on Fresh Fish Culture.   Pastor Sulpicio  Morales has rice farm,  corn farm and banana farme there.  We  have  started a  “Fresh Fish Culture” in his farm.  That time the fish he was caring, has more than 5,000 growing fish. They were now about 1 inches wide. We visited the farm.

The fish farm   was  serving as “demo-farm” that will helped  training  fish culture easy for church and community people to learn. Most farmers have fish in their farms. But they do not culture. Fish grow in the farm, without feeding them. But only few fish. With the technology of Pastor Sulpicio Morales, he have some 5,000 fishes cultured  in the farm. And soon, the fish will be harvested.

That time, there were   8  Fresh Fish Demo Farms that  we  were   developed, as training center  for the  church and community people. Our visitor  expressed  his thanks for enabling him to see some  ways,  what we  were doing to  help people  learn some practical technologies  to improve their income and lives. Then we proceeded to Iloilo City.

We have lunched at Hotel del Rio at 2:30 PM. . He will stay there for the night. Then he will go back to Manila in the afternoon.  And in 2 days, he  will back to Austrialia.

He told me to write a  short project  proposal. The needs, the people who were target to be participants, the community, the projects needed to help them, how many villages and people will be involved, the number of staff involved  and  the possible project  cost.  He told me to make it simple.  And  to send  it to him immediately when I have it finished.

He gave me  his address in Australia.  But he said, he hope some friends in Norway will be able to see the Project Proposal and will be able to share and help.

That night, I shared with Hesther what my friend have told me. That we will write  a Project Proposal. He will find ways to help us.

The following day, my friend went home, back to Australia.

A few days later, I talked to Hesther. I told  her.  “We will  write the    Project Proposal that we have started.  We will send it  to our friend.  We have  conceptualized this  project - piggery breeding project, that will be  based at Camp Higher Ground.

We called the project,  Convention Baptist Pig  and Dispersal Project. It targeted  to raise 35 female  piglets, raised as  sows, with 5  male piglets raised as boars. It has a plan for 2 pig houses, one house for raising 35 sows and 5  boars. And another house for the piglets that will come about a year  later.  It has a component of 3 full time staff and 1 part time helper   to do needed works on a call basis.

The piglets that will be born after a year and 6  months, will be dispersed to  the different projects now being  implemented  by the CPBC.  It was  a project that will be  implemented, as new   response to the CPBC General Assembly’s call  in Roxas City, 1977   to help raised income of the church members and community people, suffering  hard  under the economic situations and President Marcos deadly  under   martial law regime.

We  planned  the  Camp Higher Ground pig  project,  will  provide the needed manure and composts to fertilize some of the 50 hectares farm of CHG, that were not productive due to lack of top soil on the land. Only cogon grasses grows. I signed the project proposal. It was countersigned by the General Secretary. Then, about a  2 weeks later,  we sent it to my friend in Australia.

 

That day, in my office at CPBC, I sat and thanked God for answering our prayer. God have  spoken softly through happenings.  He  do not want us to stop working and surrender after our  raid and arrest. We were needed in the work with the UIM and URM   in Central Iloilo and Antique.

God  do not want us to leave the work.  He wants us to pursue the work we have started. And he was opening another way to expand our ministry.   Possibly a new  project, a   Pig Raising Project and Dispersals for Iloilo and Panay. 

I learned, our  friend sent  the Project Proposal  to his partners in Australia.  After, six months,  the  Baptist World Aid in Australia, sent us letter informing us, that they will  support  the CPBC Project Proposal we  sent.  With  their  support  we started and  implement the Piggery Raising  and Dispersal Project  in  Camp Higher Ground.

My friend from Australia has very close friendship with Rev. Jeffrey Parish of BWA in Australia. They joined resources and assisted  the  New Frontier Ministries of the Convention.

The experience made me realized how God works. He taught me not to succumbed to fears.  And we  must strengthen the staff, despite the dangers we faced, working mostly in the hinterland villages, with martial law  and the   military growing very dangerous. These programs, the military has become suspicious. But we knew God can always protect His people.  

I prayed.  I asked God to give us   strength and courage to go on.  God  has said,  He will always lead and guide our ways.