Monday, January 12, 2009

Day 8: Rice, Rice, Baby.

Today we started off being spoilt again with a continental breakfast with number of the team enjoying a coffee which for some was much needed to get them moving. We had to prepare for ourselves for a big day of church and food distribution. The weather threatened to affect our plans for the day. Our rice which was generously paid for by many people in Perth was separated into bags, we had the boxes of sardines and noodles ready to go. However it became clear that our 15 man jeepney would not hold all our food supplies and all our team in wet weather. As always Pastor Gary (aka “The Weapon”) had a solution, which meant we hired another jeepney to get us to our first destination.

Needless to say it was an interesting drive with a “couple” of rough patches. We shared our newly acquired ride with some surprised locals and a bench seat in between our legs. After dropping off the locals to their stops, we arrived at Pastor Jerome’s church. We were warmly welcomed even though we were a little late and all given shell necklaces which was very generous of the small church. The congregation were ready to get started and we were soon all praising to a 6 string guitar with only 5 strings. Giles “Mr Excitement” Creelman was the most impressed with Pastor Jerome’s efforts who was guitarist, singer and leader. The pastor then became translator extraordinaire as the Tower of Power shared a short message of encouragement to the congregation. After meeting some of the congregation and playing with the kids of the church we were blessed with another massive meal of rice and chicken.

After lunch started the real work for the day, distributing 603 packs of rice, sardines and noodles started. We walked to the main part of town where we set ourselves up and with some assistance from the congregation again we were ready to give. Before we started The Greek Adonis was able to share with the locals and got such a massive response we didn’t have enough “The Answer” booklets to hand back. The Adonis definitely made an impression there, but that’s another story. The food distribution went relatively smoothly considering the number of people that turned up. Micko “Braveheart” Valenti proved his worth with his many years of experience and worked. Everyone pitched in and did a great job. There were a lot of smiling faces by the time we were done at both places.

Even though we haven’t played a game today I think it would be fair to say we are still fairly worn out. It was a really worthwhile time of ministry though and I hope many of the people that get followed up will have seen Jesus love as we shared this food with them because of all those who donated money. We have our American import back Josh “The Deacon” Manthe back as we hit the courts again tomorrow, so stay tuned.

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