The Church in the Wildwood

A request from a pastor brought me to Lemery, a town I had not been to before.  The last several miles of road wound through tree covered mountains.  Arriving in Lemery, I located the small dirt road that traveled north toward the location of the church where I was to speak.

At the end of the road I was met by the pastor.  “Just follow me, sir,” he gleefully instructed.  The first part of the trail was through rice paddies.  Farmers build elevated mud paths in their rice fields primarily to contain rain water.  These paths are just barely wide enough for young nimble Filipino farmers to walk on.  But for big lumbering Americans they can be a real challenge to navigate.

After about a half mile of meandering through fields and forest, we arrived at the pastor’s house, a simple bamboo structure with a nepa roof.  Attached to the house was a kitchen – a concrete sink surrounded by rusted tin sheets.  Smoke billowed from the wood burning stove.  Food was being prepared.

After traveling for nearly 3 hours, nature was calling me.  The pastor embarrassingly directed me to the place where nature’s business was done.  Just beside a tree on a little piece of barren ground (but still in plane view of anyone who wanted to look) was a badly stained toilet bowl – just the bowl, surrounded by more discarded tin sheets, about waist high.  No water was in the bowl, just a hole.  (I don’t know why I bother to look!)  Fortunately I was able to do my business behind a more secluded tree.

Next the pastor’s house was the church building - an open, hollow block structure with tin roofs, some of which were fairly new.  The pastor explained, “When super Typhoon Hiayan passed through, it destroyed nearly everything here.  The government gave each family 8 tin roof sheets and we used ours to put on this church building.”

Government donated solar panels powered a little amplifier that the pastor used to summon the church members.  The children came first, eager to see the white American, a rare sight in these parts.  The parents and farmers followed.  About 30 people gathered in the small church structure, amused at the American who could speak their language.  For the rest of the morning and a couple of hours after lunch, I shared about God’s love to people who were hungry for it.

I guess these kind of places are my favorite.  Their lifestyle is simple, their needs are few, their values are strong.  It’s easy to see that one doesn’t really need much in order to live from day to day.  From the little hilltop we could breath the freshness of nearby plants, crops, and trees while observing small native-built houses on distant mountains. 

Best of all, the people here seem to care more about their spiritual life than folks in the city, where materialism, entertainment, and busyness seem to drown out any attempt God makes to speak to peoples’ hearts.  I hope, in the days to come, I can find more places like this, where the sky is clear and blue, and where hearts are open and ready, to fellowship with God.