ClarksGo

This past month has been incredibly eventful. We were visited by Cindy’s sister and husband. We went down to Cagayan de Oro to do disaster relief and hosted Lide-Walker Conference and three American guests. During our time in Cagayan do Oro we did psychological first-aid training and debriefing of traumatized persons. The story that sticks our in my mind is when we were hosting a debriefing for pastors one evening. My group contained pastors who had lost everything in the flood. Though no one had lost a family member. One pastor’s nephew was found floating in the Bay of Macajalar the day after typhoon Sendong clinging to a 6 liter water container. The pastor said he cried for a whole day when they found him alive. By the look of the pastor’s eyes, I suspect he’d been crying for the past three weeks.
I’ll write more and post pictures soon. – Ryan

Here’s a little something we’ve put together.  We hope you enjoy it!

The Clarks Say, "Thank You!"

Thank You Everyone:  A Short Video Click Here!

by Ryan Clark

As I stepped outside this morning three brilliant things greeted me.  The first two were blue sky and warm sun.  It is now the time of year here when we can expect sunny mornings and a few days a week without rain.

The third greeting was the smell of cedar.  Close to our house the maintenance guys are de-bulking a large cedar tree.  Cutting down limbs and sectioning the larger branches threw into the air the smell of fence posts, clothes chests, and a hamster’s first day.

I walked over to where they guys were working.  I chatted with Jonathan, the head of maintenance.  I pretended to watch the guys saw and chop as I drew in deep breaths.   We live on a campus of mostly pine trees, so I’m often reminded of Georgia when the sun comes out and heats the pine bark.

Today, I thought about Arkansas.

I don’t remember exactly why I needed a large cedar post.  I remember taking an axe into the woods behind our house near Mansfield, Arkansas (the address was technically Booneville).   I cut down a large cedar tree.  I remember it was sunny and it took me all day.  I stripped it of its branches and prepared a perfectly good cedar post for…something.

That was about 20 years ago.  I’ve been trying to remember all day what I needed that post for and I can’t bring it to mind.

It’s possible that I didn’t actually need a post; rather, I just needed to make one.

We’ve heard it before, “It’s not the destination but the journey that is important.”  This brings to mind my “to do” list for today:

• Write Sermon for Sunday
• Number Medicine Receipts and Mail
• Review Discussion Questions for 2:30 Class:  Did The Patient Have a “Good” Death?
• Pay Granville
• Edit Textbook
• Start Nov. 7^th Powerpoint
• Double Check with Doc. Gibs About Going to Crossover on Friday
• Read Chapter in the Fundraising Book
• Practice New Tagalog Phrase (I picked an easy one, “Saan Ka?” – Where are you?)
• Start Abstract for Dr. Knight

Twenty years from now, will I remember why I was doing any of these things?  Or, will I just be left with the images, sounds and smells and a sense that they must have needed to be done.

I am very aware that the purpose of a blog is to make frequent updates and send out bits of information broadcasted to friends, family and fans. So here is a simple update, which is to inform you and help me be more disciplined in writing.

Last week was term break and our friend Kathy came to visit from the U.S. We had a great time. She brought with her some needed supplies from the States.  Her luggage included an amazing gift from a mentor and former campus minister, Scott:  a guitar I will keep for the rest of my life.

While Kathy was here, we explored Baguio and then took a trip up to the most northern part of the country to Pagudpud (Paw-good-pude). It took us about 11 hours in the van to get there but it was worth it.

It had been several months since we’d been off the mountain.

We stayed in a simple place on the beach. Our dinner was caught by local fisherman. There were no phones (almost no phone signal), no computers, no ATMs, no Taxis, no diesel exhaust, no students, no reports and no deadlines.

There was a full moon in a cloudy night sky the last night.

It was the perfect 3-day break and the kind of fellowship we needed to start strong the third term of the academic year. Thank you, Kathy.

When we got back to PBTS it was comforting to see the students also returning with smiling faces. They’re halfway through the academic year. Emily Jane, Cindy and I just completed our first year, which seems like a million years ago until I look though our Facebook photos and am reminded that it was just yesterday when we left Atlanta.

by Neil Boggan

An anniversary is certainly an occasion for remembrance. I will begin with my remembrance of the Clarks’ arrival in the Philippines. The Director of Grounds and Maintenance (Kuya Jonathan) and I went to Manila in order to collect the Clarks on Saturday, September 25, 2010. Their flight had been delayed a little, so we had to wait longer than expected to meet them. They arrived at night, and with our collective fatigue (it averages about a six hour drive from Baguio to the Manila airport), we had planned to stay at some nearby missionary housing managed by the International Mission Board.
Kuya Jonathan and I slept very well that night, but an earlier-than-expected knock on our door from Ryan brought news that Emily Jane had not slept at all and that he and Cindy had taken turns staying up with her throughout the night. They were ready to go as soon as possible. As soon as Kuya Jonathan and I had roused ourselves sufficiently, we started the Clarks’ first journey from Manila to Baguio.

The journey was uneventful for most of it. Cindy and Ryan’s observation of the landscape would intermittently be interrupted by my questions inquiring about the journey or about mutual acquaintances back in Atlanta. They faded in and out of sleep, and by “they” I mean Cindy and Ryan, because Emily Jane was showing no signs of not having slept for about 36 hours straight.
We stopped to buy a crib for Emily Jane in Rosario. Kuya Jonathan asked the attendants to set up the crib Cindy and Ryan had picked out piece by piece in order to make sure that it would assemble correctly. After discovering that it would come together as intended, we loaded up and continued the drive. Not too long after this stop, Emily Jane finally feel asleep…for about forty-five minutes and then she was wide awake again. It was at this point where she began to feel the affects of the long travel and a major break in her routine. She threw up, we stopped to clean up, and she threw up again a few miles down the road. She took it in stride. She wasn’t sick in the sense that she had a stomach virus; she just had had a long trip. Emily Jane would slip into a comatose state of sleep on the way to dinner that night. Such was the Clarks’ first trip from Manila to Baguio.

I had been in Baguio for about seven weeks when the Clarks arrived. We had met in 2006 when I first entered McAfee School of Theology. In fact, Ryan had sent me the information and the application to that school in October 2005. I struggled with how to make my myself available to them in the best way. On the one hand, I wanted to help them out as much as possible, but on the other hand, I knew they would need to get their bearings on their own terms and to meet people as themselves and not through me.

If I had any anxiety about this, it went away quickly as the Clarks dove into their Baguio lives headfirst. Cindy brazenly wanted to explore downtown Baguio on foot as soon as possible (and she did). Ryan cavalierly sought out as many faculty, staff, and students as he could in order to begin the process of learning names and titles.

They were the same outgoing and curious people I had remembered so fondly from my time in Atlanta. Just like in Atlanta, they intentionally created community in Baguio wherever they were, and they were still good at it. I don’t know how many times I went to their house for dinner, but I greatly appreciated it every time not just because I like them, but because it allowed me to be in community with them. We shared several adventures together: Tam-Awan Village, Bataan, Mt. Samat, Pure Gold Supermarket trips, haircuts, a church anniversary, Hong Kong, and ethnic dancing to name some.
Perhaps the most blatant roles to point out in which the Clarks served in my life were chefs, hosts, a baby sister, trip companions, and co-workers. The more abstract, but no less important, roles to point out were personal counselors, cultural interpreters, cheerleaders, good examples of parents, and safe space. They helped me process what was going on in my life in the Philippines and what I would bring back to the USA with me from the Philippines. Their commitment to the creation of community demonstrated, as it did in Atlanta, their intentionality and their generosity with their resources.
Those of you who know the Clarks will not be surprised by their outgoingness, curiosity, or their generosity. You are aware that these attributes are part of what it means to be Cindy, Ryan, and Emily Jane Clark. In terms of their one-year anniversary, however, I would like us to engage in an act of holy memory and remember who the Clarks are becoming.

What I’m asking you to do seems like a blatant abuse of grammar, for how can one remember something that is not past, but rather, that is ongoing? In celebrating an anniversary for overseas missionaries, we can’t just remember them for how they were the last time we interacted with them. We have to remember why they are overseas in the first place: to enact change and to be changed. The Clarks are in Baguio, the Philippines for two and a half years in order to change the lives of the people they encounter. Simultaneously, the Clarks felt the need to be changed by a long-term mission experience overseas. They did not want to be changed because their lives were boring or because they were avoiding a massive amount of gambling debts; rather, they felt that God was nudging them toward this experience.

As a result of the active change they will be doing in the lives of others and the passive change that will be done to them through others and through circumstances, we as their supporters and loved ones must actively and intentionally engage in acts of holy memory so that we will not try to control their becoming with the limits of the memories we have of them in our encounters with them in certain places and certain times. No, we must give them sacred space to become the Clarks of tomorrow and the Clarks of 2013 (their slated year of return) today. That doesn’t mean we throw away our pictures of them and expect them to be unrecognizable when we encounter them next. It does mean, however, that we place their lives within our holy memories so that we can properly allow them the sacred space to develop into people who are changed by an experience that very few of us get to witness firsthand.

In order to illustrate this better, I will refer to a story in a book I am currently reading, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. In this autobiographical story, Hessler recounts his two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fuling, China. Toward the end of the work he tells about his father coming to visit him. He says of his father’s visit, “And I found that it was difficult to predict what would bother him, because I had been in Fuling for so long that I no longer saw it with a true outsider’s eye…I found that the parent visit was a kind of revelation: suddenly I saw how much I had learned and how much I had forgotten” (pp. 328-329).

With this era of technology, one doesn’t always forget as often as in days when there were no Skype or e-mail, but I think it safe to say that the Clarks feel fairly integrated into the society in which they are currently living. Ryan’s parents came to visit not too long ago, and I think that the experience was revelatory showing them how much they had learned in the time they have been in the Philippines. The Clarks, of course, have one of the best mechanisms for measuring how much things are changing: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed two-year-old (going on three) daughter. Through Emily Jane, Ryan and Cindy have a more tangible grasp on time and change, although this does not necessarily help them gage how they personally are changing.

Still, no matter how integrated they are in the Filipino society, they are not Filipino. On the other hand, no matter how integrated they were in US society, they are not living in the US currently nor do they anticipate doing so for another year and a half. You see, a long-term overseas mission experience causes a lot of internal cultural confusion. You go back and forth between the macro worlds of home culture and current culture and the micro worlds of loved ones from home and loved ones from the temporary home. As you become more accustomed to the current, temporary home learning its language, customs, and manners, you fall out of practice with those same features from your native home.

As you reflect on the one-year anniversary of the Clarks in Baguio, the Philippines, exercise your holy memory. Remember, the Clarks are in Baguio to enact change and to be changed. They are straddling the two macro worlds of their U.S. lives and their Filipino lives. They go between these worlds daily. Sometimes this goes smoothly, and sometimes it does not. On some days, they will feel almost 100% integrated into Filipino society, and other days they will feel just how nonintegrated they are into Filipino society. At times they will think they could live the rest of their lives in the Philippines, and at other times, they will wish they were living in U.S. again.

As they get a more objective grasp on what U.S. culture and Filipino culture value, they will evaluate these values and decide the positives and negatives of them. As their identity becomes more and more mixed with their Filipino lives, their own identities become more mysterious to themselves in some ways. They will ask themselves, “Who am I (are we) becoming?” It is at this juncture that we bless them through our financial gifts, our prayers, our letters, and our care packages. This is how we affirm and encourage them in their process of becoming. This is how we say a holy “Yes” to their enacting change and their being changed. This is how we keep them in holy memory.

Ryan, Cindy, and Emily Jane: Happy One-Year Anniversary! I miss you all, and I remember our time spent together in Baguio very fondly. May Christ be a beautiful part of your enacting change and your being changed. Thank you for sharing your lives with those whom you are encountering. Your hospitality and generosity are gifts from God that you are passing on to many others in the form of the “Beloved Community” to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. Best wishes to all of you and much love, always.

Neil

It was raining again and the rain wasn’t about to stop. Emily Jane was waking from her nap and I realized we needed about 5 hours of activities before bedtime. She could help me cook dinner and then we’d eat it. That would be about 60 minutes. She could watch Dora during her snack. This would be another 30 minutes. We still had to fill 3.5 hours.

Three and a half hours at the end of a rainy weekend with a 2.5 year old is difficult when all the toys have already been played with and all the movies watched.

If she wants to spend 10 minutes washing her hands in the bathroom, that’s fine. It might lead to OCD, but worth the risk.  Three hours and twenty minutes to go.

Feed the dog one ALPO nugget at a time. This will take another 10 minutes. It would have taken longer but Dura (the dog’s name sounds like Dora but means “spit”) got impatient and gobbled up the rest of her food. She can wash her hands again.

Three hours and ten minutes to go. Text the neighbor who has a three year old. At least they can play with each other. No response.

Ring around the rosies. Make me fly (daddy flies the little girl around the house making stops and saving small creatures). Dinning room dance party. Feels like hours. Only another 10 minutes have past.

Three hours to go.

Daddy thinks about a cabinet full of cereal boxes and remembers a large balakbayan box is sleeping in the closet.

Daddy announces, “Emily Jane, we’re going to play princess castle.”

“Emily Jane, this is your castle.” Daddy drags out a large box of which Emily Jane wants to be immediately inside. “My castle needs toys.” Mommy begins to fill it with the requested toys.

Daddy gets out the glue, scissors, markers, empty cereal boxes and glitter. “What are we going to do now, Daddy?” Emily Jane asks. “We’re going to make princess hats.” I explain. Mommy removes the top from a dead umbrella, “This can be something.”

Two hours to go. Neighbor texts back. Sam can come over. Sam and EJ play princessessess. Mommy reads books to the the two little girls. Wait, what time is it?

Dinner time.
Bath time.
Bed time.

Rainy Season.

by Cindy Clark
What’s the difference between the students I teach now and the kids I’ve been teaching for the last 10 years? Seminary students don’t pee on the floor.

Recently I’ve been reflecting on one of my favorite groups of students: the Burmese. These students are incredible musicians and can sight read just about anything. Burmese students learn music by ear in school. Because of this, they have incredible ears (tonal memory), being able to hear and remember entire pieces of music. Instead of the five-line music staff we westerners are used to seeing, they use a different style of notation comprised of numbers, dots and lines.

Additionally, teaching excellent musicians how to read western notation is humbling because it’s difficult for Westerners to imagine what good music is without it. I continue to learn so much from the Burmese students. The students have taught me their system of notation and they’ve taught me new cultural expressions of the church calendar. One size does not fit all. We know this, but figuring out how to adapt the church calendar and hymns is a challenge. For example, on Good Friday, a very somber time in our culture, they host a huge celebration where they stay up until Saturday!

Most of the Burmese students at PBTS are ethnically Chin which make up about 1% of the population in Myanmar. As members of the Christian minority (4%) their people have endured multiple persecutions. Some Burmese students will return to Burma and be teachers and ministers of music in their home churches. Several will serve as missionaries to Burmese refugees in Thailand.

A personal challenge is that I don’t want western notation to replace the rich musical heritage they have. My prayer is that this new knowledge will add to their rich musical heritage and not erode such a great strength in their culture.

I also hope for the opportunity to visit Burma to see their churches and schools and to learn more about their culture. As an American, this may not be possible any time soon. Burmese aren’t even allowed to have people stay at their house unless they register visitors ahead of time. Foreigners can only stay in state sponsored hotels. American credit cards are not accepted and ATM machines do not exist!

The social status of women seemed to be the most engaging conversation we had in the course “Minister as Crisis Counselor”. The conversation, or I should say, conversations ranged from the out of control teen-pregnancy rate in the Philippines to forced marriage in other Asian countries. While roll playing a counseling scenario where a young woman has been date/acquaintance raped, the issue was raised whether or not there is something a woman can do to “deserve” or “ask for” a sexual assault. While it seems ridiculous to American ears (and lots of other ears as well), some of our students come from cultures where victimized women share the responsibility of their assault by the way they dress, where they hang out and the people they hang out with. Then, even worse, women are the sole bearers of the resulting shame.

Something else you need to understand about instruction in this context is that students expect a Bible verse for everything I teach. Pulling out the incident of the women (and the missing man) caught in adultery in John 8 is good enough, “Class; it is important that we teach in our churches and in every corner of the globe that God abhors violence against women. There’s nothing a woman can do to ‘ask’ for a sexual assault.” While the passage is not about sexual assault – it can be applied to societies which use violence to work out their anxiety regarding issues of sexuality and power. We went on to discuss crisis interventions, how to refer in these matters, and how to begin changing the mindset that’s common in many “conservative” societies.

While women are held in very high regard in the Philippines (not true for many countries near here) and forced marriage is not common at all, we still are finding women working in “massage parlors” who are not free to come to events hosted by partnering ministries. This almost always means that they are here in Baguio against their will. According to the Department of Health, there are approximately 3000 registered sex workers in Baguio, which has a population of about 250,000.

The students in my classes are riveted by issues of social justice and the Gospel’s ability to transform their home communities into places of restoration. Approaching these issues from a pastoral care perspective is allowing many students to envision more holistic ministries. Sometimes we forget (and my students are not aware of) how much empowered women have helped in the way we share Gospel. A good example is the Women’s Missionary Union, which is in my opinion the backbone of the modern missionary movement. WMU’s impact arguably would not be possible without a congregational (democratic) form of church government where women have a voice that is situated in a society, which values the hearts, minds, souls and bodies of those women. We’re very fortunate to serve with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship who puts ministry to the most marginalized a top priority and intensely advocates for women around the globe.

“We spent Cinco de Mayo with a room full of hookers.”  I told a friend. Well, technically it was the fourth of May and while we weren’t drinking margaritas; we were eating Mexican food. Last week we taught a course on cooking Mexican food with ladies involved with the Kalinga-Crossover, a ministry to sex workers in Baguio. The class was held in a conference room at the Baguio City Health Department. We talked about sanitation, cooking basics, and then prepared four dishes – salsa, beans, Spanish rice, and the taco/burrito plate. The food was very good.

The ministry provides education and other opportunities for sex workers to learn alternative skills and transition out of the trade.

The recent hushed buzz around the health department was that during the last quarter, two women and one man tested positive for HIV. Testing is voluntary and usually finds 0-1 new positive HIV infections each quarter. The spike raises concerns that Baguio’s relative geographic isolation and cultural conservatism is no longer providing the buffer it used to with regard to sexually transmitted diseases.

Cinco de Mayo is an interesting holiday. While in the U.S, CdM is mainly an excuse to drink too much tequila with way to many salty chips and salsa, it does commemorate Mexico’s success at driving out the French during the battle of Puebla in 1865.

“Driving out” is a common historical thread here in the Philippines. The Spanish, the Japanese, and to some degree the Americans are all examples of immense accomplishments in effecting transformation. Right now around the world everyone seems to be talking bout the right way to accomplish monumental and difficult tasks. Overthrowing governments. Establishing rule of law. Eliminating terrorism and terrorists. Assisting flood victims. Tamping down Dengue. Extracting liquefied petroleum. Paying for 16 gallons of 4-dollar gas.

On the fourth of May in Baguio City I had a moment where I felt completely present with my surroundings. The women were standing in pairs or trios at stove-tops – cooking and chatting with each other. They were laughing and comparing notes about what they thought they were supposed to be doing. Everyone had their guard down as the room filled with the aroma of sizzling peppers, onions and garlic. It was not a room full of “hookers” and “ministers”.  It was a room full of people doing there best in life and trying at that moment to make a decent taco. I thought to myself, “This isn’t monumental, but I think it’s good and might end up being important.”

As the class started wrapping up, someone asked if they could take a picture. Then another person got out a camera-phone and took another. The benediction that day was a barrage of photographs being taken of the food, of each other, and of all of us eating the food. A few of the ladies were giggling about posting their pictures on facebook (actually they were giggling and talking and the only word I understood, really, was “facebook”). As we packed up I had a final thought that day, “If these ladies are willing to post photos of themselves with us (two missionaries) holding plates of Mexican food on their facebook then what we’ve done here may have been at least a little transformative.”

We’ll see.

Epilogue:  A friend and colleague asked about my use of the term “hooker” and rightly so.  My intention in using that term is to express a feeling, not to label people.  Even in the technical sense, none of the ladies we were with May 4 were in fact “hookers”.  My use of that word is an attempt at using to humor to express my anxiety.  Sine this blog is public, I should be more careful with my language.  We use labels to help us understand things better, like what is in that can of stuff on the shelf.  The problem with using them with people is that labels “stick” and it is difficult for us to un-stick them. It’s particularly hurtful when those labels are not true or are misleading.  I’ve made clarifications in the original blog noted in italics.

*The photos above were taken with and are being used with permission.  They include mix of people including volunteers.