Rebooked '07
Previously considered as one of the “wonders of the world,” the Banawe Rice Terraces has been edged out of the recently declared list of the new Seven Wonders of the World. But I don’t think it has ceased to evoke wonder from both foreign visitors and local tourists like me.
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit Ifugao, the province where the famous terraced mountains are located. It was an awe-inspiring sight, those gigantic staircases; an extraordinary inheritance, passed on from generation to generation of simple farmer folk. And it amazes me more when I think that these rice terraces has been existing for thousands of years, eked out of the mountains by a people who at that time neither had bulldozers, power tools nor degrees in engineering. Only a unified community with a tremendous resolve could have pulled off such a task. More remarkably, the rice terraces are still serving their purpose to this day, centuries after they were carved out of the mountainsides that one can actually say that the fruits of the Ifugao ancestors’ labors are still—literally—being reaped.
Sightseeing wasn’t the main reason I came to Banawe though; I was actually part of a group that went on a three-day outreach trip to Ifugao last June. Seven members representing the UP Diliman Navigators Alumni and five from Trumpets ARTreach came together for a project named ‘Rebooked’. Before we went to see the rice terraces at the end of the trip, we gave what must have been a ton of books to public elementary and high schools and a Bible school in the locale.
Like the famed rice terraces, the books we handed over to the schools were some sort of an “inheritance” too—most of the them were used (but still useful) textbooks, reference materials, and other types of literature collected from relatives, friends, co-workers, and neighbors in Metro Manila and nearby areas. There were also individuals that we met along the way who took time to find and gather books from their homes. For many of them, it offered a convenient chance to help others and a very charitable way to get rid of stuff that would otherwise go on taking up space and gathering dust in their homes.
In addition to assisting with the book donations, the Trumpets ARTreach mentors performed during the programs and directed a half-day theater workshop for the school kids that culminated with a short presentation. for the seasoned theater performers-tutors who handled similar workshops many times before, it may seem that training the Ifugao kids to perform will be a piece of cake. But it wasn’t. For one, they held classes in the non-air-conditioned halls and the modest outdoor yard of a community Bible school so that they have to bear with the heat and humidity of an extended tropical summer. And given that they have to teach a bunch of rambunctious kids with nary a theater experience, from the small agricultural town of Lamut where the primary spoken languages are Ilocano and Ifugao…well, helping these children give satisfactory performances in just a few hours definitely wasn’t easy at all.
Neither were the tasks of collecting, sorting and packing the books, raising funds to bring them to Ifugao, and organizing the team. To begin with, we were just a group of friends who, although with previous experiences in similar activities, would be carrying out this project sans the full scaffold of institutions or organizations. It was overwhelming, to say the least. And it became more daunting when after a lot of backbreaking work, our fund-raisers didn’t generate the expected cash, books were coming at a slow pace, and the trip schedule was moved several times. In our eyes, we didn’t have enough money, we were relatively undermanned, and we lacked preparation. All we really had, apart from the steadfast support of friends, is the heart to reach out to others and the conviction that this is what God has led us to do as an answer to our prayers.
But by a power I'm sure was not ours, we were able to bring the books to the schools of Ifugao. The teachers and the school kids gave us a reception with such warmth rivaled only by the bright-sunshine-and-clear-blue-sky weather we had during those three days. The reading and theater workshops we conducted the second day were well-attended and by the end of the afternoon, we were able to help the kids come up with decent skits of the Parable of the Lost Sheep and The Parable of the Sower. We had them perform in the lawn of the Tribal Gospel Missions Bible School compound just before sunset. The light was perfect and a cool breeze was blowing. I didn't see Him, but somehow I knew that, as the kids take the field to give a rendition of Jesus’ parables with such heartfelt enthusiasm, God was smiling as He watched.
Yet unknown to others at that time, each of us would rather do something else or have the project accomplished in another, “better” way. Personal concerns—none of which were too trivial to be left behind in Manila—hijacked our backpacks and we lugged them to Ifugao along with the books and our extra clothes. It was but natural then, that some would rather seek solace on their own and tend to these internal matters than deal with a hundred giddy children. We were, in our hearts, actually longing for a chance to soak in days of mercy—those days in the boxing ring of life when you hear the bell ring and you’re allowed to go to your corner where somebody lets you sip solace, towels off your weariness, and dabs relief on your battered face.^
For the Rebooked team, this boxing round started earlier. Midway through preparations, the project leader faced insecurities about his capacity to lead the team and privately entertained doubts about Rebooked's completion. As it turned out, those times of apprehension were actually God's way of redirecting the heart's course. If everything went well as we planned them, God knows we may succumb to the temptation of taking the credit. But God wasn’t teaching us about project management; what He wanted us to learn is to depend on His provision for what we need and what is necessary in His work. After all, it is from Him that we desire to bring goodness to others (Ephesians 2:10) and from Him that we get all the resources to do so (John 15:5).
Still, many in the team were also concerned about bringing long-term results in such a short time. Will providing books to some far-flung school library do much to raise the level of education of the young there? Even if it did, what assurances do we have that our good deed will bear fruit and contribute to transforming a generation of Filipinos to become more learned, responsible and responsive citizens? And from an even larger perspective I asked, will these books matter in the grand scheme of eternal life for the Ifugaos?
Sometimes it is difficult to grasp the power of one. It takes extra effort to convince ourselves that, yes, the little good deed that we do—with second-hand books, over one weekend, or whatever we find ourselves with—can be used by God to effect change. Like the ripples that a small stone makes when it is dropped in a still pond, our small acts of faithfulness have the potential to grow into eternal significance. Through Rebooked, my friends and I learned to appreciate more the transforming power of God. I realized that His work cannot be limited by anything, certainly not by the little time or money we had. Whether it’s a short encounter or a lifelong friendship, a hefty amount of cash or second-hand goods, God can break and multiply the few loaves of bread and the small fish we have to feed crowds who are hungry for His mercy and compassion.
I don’t think any of us got to spend time alone that weekend. But I’m certain that neither was anyone disappointed with how Rebooked turned out. True, it’s difficult to be selfless, to think about other people’s needs before ours—to be unconditionally giving isn’t the default setting of human nature since the fall. And to let the world know about His love and His gift of salvation while we ourselves are still learning to receive and live out His grace and redemption appears to be a mammoth task. But if a community of primitive farmers can make rice paddies come out of mountains, I'm sure the Church can make a harvest of the world. And I'm glad to be part of it.
Just a couple of weeks after the Banawe outreach, still sleep-deprived and scrambling to meet my job deadlines, I attended a short course on Transformational Development. On the first day of sessions, I distinctly heard the main speaker talk about an indication of real transformation in a community. She said that a community has been positively transformed if the development workers feel that they have benefited more from the people they serve than they have given to that community. This reminded me of Rebooked’s last day in Ifugao. Exhausted and sleepy as we were in the bus back to Manila, that is exactly how we felt just before we left the place—that we gained more than we gave away. Of course, that's nothing new. Didn’t Jesus say, about 2,000 years ago, that it is better to give than to receive?
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit Ifugao, the province where the famous terraced mountains are located. It was an awe-inspiring sight, those gigantic staircases; an extraordinary inheritance, passed on from generation to generation of simple farmer folk. And it amazes me more when I think that these rice terraces has been existing for thousands of years, eked out of the mountains by a people who at that time neither had bulldozers, power tools nor degrees in engineering. Only a unified community with a tremendous resolve could have pulled off such a task. More remarkably, the rice terraces are still serving their purpose to this day, centuries after they were carved out of the mountainsides that one can actually say that the fruits of the Ifugao ancestors’ labors are still—literally—being reaped.
Sightseeing wasn’t the main reason I came to Banawe though; I was actually part of a group that went on a three-day outreach trip to Ifugao last June. Seven members representing the UP Diliman Navigators Alumni and five from Trumpets ARTreach came together for a project named ‘Rebooked’. Before we went to see the rice terraces at the end of the trip, we gave what must have been a ton of books to public elementary and high schools and a Bible school in the locale.
Like the famed rice terraces, the books we handed over to the schools were some sort of an “inheritance” too—most of the them were used (but still useful) textbooks, reference materials, and other types of literature collected from relatives, friends, co-workers, and neighbors in Metro Manila and nearby areas. There were also individuals that we met along the way who took time to find and gather books from their homes. For many of them, it offered a convenient chance to help others and a very charitable way to get rid of stuff that would otherwise go on taking up space and gathering dust in their homes.
In addition to assisting with the book donations, the Trumpets ARTreach mentors performed during the programs and directed a half-day theater workshop for the school kids that culminated with a short presentation. for the seasoned theater performers-tutors who handled similar workshops many times before, it may seem that training the Ifugao kids to perform will be a piece of cake. But it wasn’t. For one, they held classes in the non-air-conditioned halls and the modest outdoor yard of a community Bible school so that they have to bear with the heat and humidity of an extended tropical summer. And given that they have to teach a bunch of rambunctious kids with nary a theater experience, from the small agricultural town of Lamut where the primary spoken languages are Ilocano and Ifugao…well, helping these children give satisfactory performances in just a few hours definitely wasn’t easy at all.
Neither were the tasks of collecting, sorting and packing the books, raising funds to bring them to Ifugao, and organizing the team. To begin with, we were just a group of friends who, although with previous experiences in similar activities, would be carrying out this project sans the full scaffold of institutions or organizations. It was overwhelming, to say the least. And it became more daunting when after a lot of backbreaking work, our fund-raisers didn’t generate the expected cash, books were coming at a slow pace, and the trip schedule was moved several times. In our eyes, we didn’t have enough money, we were relatively undermanned, and we lacked preparation. All we really had, apart from the steadfast support of friends, is the heart to reach out to others and the conviction that this is what God has led us to do as an answer to our prayers.
But by a power I'm sure was not ours, we were able to bring the books to the schools of Ifugao. The teachers and the school kids gave us a reception with such warmth rivaled only by the bright-sunshine-and-clear-blue-sky weather we had during those three days. The reading and theater workshops we conducted the second day were well-attended and by the end of the afternoon, we were able to help the kids come up with decent skits of the Parable of the Lost Sheep and The Parable of the Sower. We had them perform in the lawn of the Tribal Gospel Missions Bible School compound just before sunset. The light was perfect and a cool breeze was blowing. I didn't see Him, but somehow I knew that, as the kids take the field to give a rendition of Jesus’ parables with such heartfelt enthusiasm, God was smiling as He watched.
Yet unknown to others at that time, each of us would rather do something else or have the project accomplished in another, “better” way. Personal concerns—none of which were too trivial to be left behind in Manila—hijacked our backpacks and we lugged them to Ifugao along with the books and our extra clothes. It was but natural then, that some would rather seek solace on their own and tend to these internal matters than deal with a hundred giddy children. We were, in our hearts, actually longing for a chance to soak in days of mercy—those days in the boxing ring of life when you hear the bell ring and you’re allowed to go to your corner where somebody lets you sip solace, towels off your weariness, and dabs relief on your battered face.^
For the Rebooked team, this boxing round started earlier. Midway through preparations, the project leader faced insecurities about his capacity to lead the team and privately entertained doubts about Rebooked's completion. As it turned out, those times of apprehension were actually God's way of redirecting the heart's course. If everything went well as we planned them, God knows we may succumb to the temptation of taking the credit. But God wasn’t teaching us about project management; what He wanted us to learn is to depend on His provision for what we need and what is necessary in His work. After all, it is from Him that we desire to bring goodness to others (Ephesians 2:10) and from Him that we get all the resources to do so (John 15:5).
Still, many in the team were also concerned about bringing long-term results in such a short time. Will providing books to some far-flung school library do much to raise the level of education of the young there? Even if it did, what assurances do we have that our good deed will bear fruit and contribute to transforming a generation of Filipinos to become more learned, responsible and responsive citizens? And from an even larger perspective I asked, will these books matter in the grand scheme of eternal life for the Ifugaos?
Sometimes it is difficult to grasp the power of one. It takes extra effort to convince ourselves that, yes, the little good deed that we do—with second-hand books, over one weekend, or whatever we find ourselves with—can be used by God to effect change. Like the ripples that a small stone makes when it is dropped in a still pond, our small acts of faithfulness have the potential to grow into eternal significance. Through Rebooked, my friends and I learned to appreciate more the transforming power of God. I realized that His work cannot be limited by anything, certainly not by the little time or money we had. Whether it’s a short encounter or a lifelong friendship, a hefty amount of cash or second-hand goods, God can break and multiply the few loaves of bread and the small fish we have to feed crowds who are hungry for His mercy and compassion.
I don’t think any of us got to spend time alone that weekend. But I’m certain that neither was anyone disappointed with how Rebooked turned out. True, it’s difficult to be selfless, to think about other people’s needs before ours—to be unconditionally giving isn’t the default setting of human nature since the fall. And to let the world know about His love and His gift of salvation while we ourselves are still learning to receive and live out His grace and redemption appears to be a mammoth task. But if a community of primitive farmers can make rice paddies come out of mountains, I'm sure the Church can make a harvest of the world. And I'm glad to be part of it.
Just a couple of weeks after the Banawe outreach, still sleep-deprived and scrambling to meet my job deadlines, I attended a short course on Transformational Development. On the first day of sessions, I distinctly heard the main speaker talk about an indication of real transformation in a community. She said that a community has been positively transformed if the development workers feel that they have benefited more from the people they serve than they have given to that community. This reminded me of Rebooked’s last day in Ifugao. Exhausted and sleepy as we were in the bus back to Manila, that is exactly how we felt just before we left the place—that we gained more than we gave away. Of course, that's nothing new. Didn’t Jesus say, about 2,000 years ago, that it is better to give than to receive?
*with JC Gotinga, Jean Francis Barcena, Roovin Estrellanes, and Alexander Tan
^ metaphor partly adapted from Sue Monk Kidd's work
