Mindoro outreach to a Mangyan tribe

One of our outreaches this last month was on the island of Mindoro. We spent just about a week on the island. A handful of the group were able to stay at a resort there on the island by the beach. The rest of us stayed up in the mountains in the jungle with the tribe. Our main outreach was to build a bathroom for the tribe. There was a Korean church that came and built a church building but there was no bathroom. After the Korean church came and build the building a group of pastors came and built them a sewer system and two toilets on a cement slab but left it open. When the pastor of the church here visited the tribe he saw the bathroom and told them he would bring a group back and finish it for them and that is what we did.

We arrived on the island early in the morning and had breakfast with two missionaries on the island who organized the work we would be doing. During breakfast he offered us one of his vehicles to use since the place where we would be going would be up the mountain in the middle of the jungle. However this vehicle had been in and had some issues. My pastor volunteered me to fix the vehicle so that we could use it. I was originally on the construction team for the bathroom but this became my ministry for the week. Within the day I figured out the problem was the power steering was gone but otherwise usable and I was back on the construction team. However I went to go pick up my pastor who would be the driver and after he witnessed the unique personality of the vehicle he said he wouldn't drive it and now that became my job for the week: chauffeuring the pastors and the construction team back and forth. Definitely a memorable experience driving that car. I had not learned how to drive manual before this so I had to learn without gauges, no first gear and no power steering while off-road up a mountain. Thankfully the chauffeuring and picking up supplies didn't take all my time and I was able to help with the construction of the bathroom and hang out with the people from the tribe there.

During the week we were there I stayed with the construction team up the mountain in the church building that the Korean church provided. Even though this is the cold months the weather was great for sleeping out in the open. All the nights went well except for the last night for some reason something attracted a bunch of ants and we all woke up in the middle of the night covered in hundreds of ants. When I realized I woke everyone up and we all got them off of us and moved to the other side of the room where there were no ants and went back to sleep. Two hours later I woke up again covered in ants and woke everyone up again. We had no idea why they all a sudden attracted to us and only us but they had moved over to the side of the room we were at. We didn't know what to do so we packed up and I drove everyone down the mountain to the resort where the rest of our team was. Since it was around 2 in the morning we didn't want to wake anyone up so we slept the rest of the night on the foyer of the resort. Definitely a memory and we were able to laugh at it later.

On our last day to celebrate our finishing of the bathroom we took everyone on a 3 hour boat tour. This tour took us to an underwater cave, to go see sea turtles, giant clams, and snorkeling around some coral reefs. It was an amazing time and the workers we were with had never done anything like it so it was great to see them be able to have a great time.