We arrived last evening in Yangoon.  The plane was about half-full and was mostly Western tourists.  We expected there to be more, since the tickets were only 7 USD!  We were met by our old friend Soetiek – a graduate of PBTS at the airport.  Dinner was Indian Chicken and Rice (I should remember the local name but I don’t).

This morning we hiked over to the central market where Cindy found three really wonderful sounding Gongs and I found a marionette. We had coffee with an ABGTS graduate and then got to have lunch with one of our student’s, Irene Pai, parents.  It’s very hot in Yangoon in the afternoon, so right now we’re sitting it out in the air conditioning.

I’ve included a photo of Cindy getting a little love bite from a monkey at Monkey Island, Thailand.

We will get to meet later with folks from Myanmar Institute of Theology and visit ministries and a church dedicated to Adoniram Judson, the first protestant missionary from the United States to Burma. He came as an American Baptist missionary and stayed for almost 40 years.

The hospitality here has been wonderful.  We’re excited to see more (after it dips below 100 degrees!)

We just finished our Sunday worship service which was a great meditative time with wonderful singing and thoughtful sermon. This week we’ve attending our team meeting along with other field personnel from Southeast Asia. We’ve really enjoyed getting to see and visit with our team as well as members from other teams. In the mornings Rick Bennet is leading us in Spiritual Formation. We’ve been focusing on the interaction between mission and vision. We’ve meditated on what it means to be formed. Mid mornings are reserved for important information with our organization and the afternoons are for our teams.
Last night Ryan went Squid fishing – caught one squid and one octopus. This morning before worship, Ryan and Emily Jane walked on the beach and picked up star fish and threw them back into the ocean. The plan is to visit Monkey Island after lunch.

Here are a few pics from our adventure so far.  Some warning stickers from our taxi from the airport in Bangkok.  Emily Jane at the beach at sunset.  Ryan catching an octopus. And the girls getting ready for take-off.  Continue to keep us in your prayers!

Many of you remarked on our article about Burmese students and our wish that we’d one day get to go to Myanmar. That one-day is coming up in May! After Secretary of State Clinton’s visit in December, Myanmar (Burma) has suddenly become more hospitable to American visitors. After our team meeting in Thailand, we will board a plane with our friends and mentors, Graham and Mimi Walker, for Yangoon. We’ll get to visit a few theological schools and music schools as well as visit some alumni from the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary (PBTS).

This is what our summer is looking like. We will fly to Thailand on May 2 for our team meeting where we’ll get to spend time with almost all the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) missionaries in Southeast Asia. After the meeting, we’ll go to Myanmar (Burma) for four days. Then, we will travel by bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and lead seminars with local pastors and other ministers there as well as tour the Killing Fields and Angkor Wat. We’ll also be debriefing PBTS students who’ve been serving as short-term missionaries in rural areas all summer. Then we will go to Vietnam to visit various ministries of PBTS graduates. We have stop-off at Kuala Lumpur on our way to Baptist Seminary in Taipei, Taiwan where Ryan will be giving a paper on E-learning at the international gathering of the Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary. Mid-June we’ll arrive back in the Philippines to start the new academic year.

Cagayan de Oro – The City of Golden Friendship January 5-9 (plus 9-11).

After hearing that CBF would be funding a disaster relief project of Cagayan do Oro (CDO) we called a meeting of Bukal Care and Counseling Center (BCCC). Bukal had taken a small team down the CDO the week before to assess and train pastors in debriefing techniques. This first trip was funded by Springhill Baptist Church, Virginia.

BCCC was started three years ago by Bob and Celia Munson along with Joel Aguirre and other volunteers in partnership with Virginia Baptists in response to disasters in Luzon.

The original plan of the trip was to debrief and train public school teachers along with local pastors in NOVA in the mornings and give pastoral support and debriefing to survivors still living in shelters around the city.

Plans changed when on Thursday morning (the morning we left for CDO) the WHO announced an immediate stop to all religious groups offering counseling and debriefing. We were told that WHO did an assessment (or was going on word of a Unicef assessment) that religious groups claiming to be doing psychological support were actually directly evangelizing traumatized persons. One specific activity of groups was showing Christian oriented films at night designed to influence a conversion experience.

Our local contact Pastor Cleto Bacarro went ahead and scheduled the NOVA training at Grace Christian School – a private school that became an emergency shelter the night of the storm and who’s administration and staff jumped into action providing emergency aid to hundreds of people who were feeing the rising flood waters the night of Dec. 16th and early morning of Dec. 17th.

Delayed flights brought us to CDO by the evening of the 5th at which time we had enough time for dinner and an orientation with Ptr. Cleto.

Early in the morning of the 6th we conducted training of 65 teachers and pastors in psychological first aid at Oro Christian Grace School. Our local contact at the school was Jeanette Li, the vice principal. She was quite wonderful in accommodating us. In the afternoon we facilitated debriefing in small groups.

Also on the 6th we got a tour of Isla de Oro – one Barangay of CDO which was completely wiped out. Located on a sandbar inside the river basin, about 1500 people from this area are still missing or are confirmed dead. There we talked with the Philippine National Police who were securing the area. They had found a dead 1 year old the day before (3 weeks after the storm). We also talked with the owner of a house, one of only a handful, that was still standing after the storm. He told of the night of the storm and how about 10 families (about 60 people) climbed into the large mango tree in his yard. The local media are calling this tree the “tree of life”.

The morning of the 7th we continued with Nova training at Cagayan Gospel Church and were joined by an additional 25 ministers from the areas from various churches and NGO’s. Cindy taught a unit on working with traumatized students and using developmentally appropriate activities which would allow the students to process their trauma and help the teachers transition back into the school’s curriculum. Ryan taught on the grief process, giving everyone a framework for understanding the emotional process at work after trauma.

It is difficult to describe the different levels of trauma among directly effected and indirectly effected survivors. Everyone agrees that the water rose so quickly that they barely had time to react. Typhoon Sendong had intense wind, but everyone was surprised at how little rain was falling in Cagayan de Oro. There are hundreds of thousands of people now who have stories of how their homes and churches were flooded. There are a few hundred stories of parents who were not able to save all their children. Everyone knows of someone who they haven’t heard from. The fliers of photos of missing children plastered all over the shelters are heartbreaking.

I spent time with one pastor whose nephew was found floating in the ocean on a 5 gallon water container 16 hours after the storm had passed. His nephew is alive and reunited with him mom in one of the shelters.

Our group was credentialed by the KEDRN (Kagayan Evangelical Disaster Relief Network) an official agency approved by the DSWD, Dept of Ed, and the Red Cross – who’s purpose was to coordinate all the efforts of the various mission groups and church related donations which had started pouring in.

Saturday evening we visited the Tent City set up by the Philippine Navy and donated by the Shelter Box Foundation and Rotary Club International. By Saturday the 7th, 400 shelters had been set up with 300 families relocated there. The DSWD had just taken responsibility for the community where about 3000 people were now living (expecting about 1000 more from shelters). They were still installing electricity as the sun set. By “chance” we ran into a little girl at the tent city who’d been involved at Pastor Cleto’s church. She took us to her family’s tent. The Bulisac family had been relocated to the tent city an hour earlier. They were disoriented and recovering from a chickenpox outbreak in their shelter. We spent time with the family who was overwhelmed by our visit – feeling a little less lost in the sea of identical white tents. They had water but no food and didn’t know when dinner would be distributed. Our team shared with them a bag of bread, fruit, and 4 chicken dinners with rice (this is all we had since we weren’t expecting to encounter hungry people at the tent city).

We had several conversations with officials who were frustrated that government agencies and NGO’s were not able to solve the problem of housing – quality of life at the tent city is better than in the shelters – but neither are permanent and there are still about 8000 families who need to be relocated to permanent housing.

I also spoke with several frustrated relief workers who were angry and broken hearted at the national and local governments inability to respond in a timely manner and coordinate with all the NGO’s offering aid. It had become common knowledge that the severe leptospirosis outbreak that started killing people two weeks after the stormwould have been easily prevented the prophylactic doxycyline had been distributed instead of sitting in boxes.

On Sunday morning our team members were distributed among different churches. Cindy and I went to Home Church which is pastored by Cleto Bacarro. It was their first day of worship in their new space. After worship we provided two sessions of small group debriefing. 3-5 p.m. and 6-9 p.m.

Our team made the decision for three members to stay a few more days in order to coordinate with the WHO and offer some support to Iligan City, about two hours away. They will return tonight (Wednesday night). It takes 12 hours to get from Baguio to CDO and 14 to Iligan City.

Cindy and I, along with Celia Munson returned to Baguio on Monday the 9th.

Numbers –
7 member team

300 meals
1200 snacks
10 Family Relocation Kits
Training of 80 teachers and ministers
Debriefing of 140

The Clarks Say, "Thank You!"

Thank You Everyone:  A Short Video Click Here!

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.