Last month, my dad was finally able to come again after borders being closed for 2 years. We went down to the new Bible College land. We hiked the perimeter (quite a trek!) to get a good feel of the whole area and discuss possibilities. Ultimately, we decided to go with the initial plan we had developed for where to put the various aspects of the project (Bible college, livelihood/church planting training, etc).
While my dad was still here, we gathered a BIG group - about 90 people! - to discuss the plans and establish some groundwork for the project. This group included our Bugkalot tribal partners, the Mangyan tribal Bible teachers, as well as Agta tribal leaders from the Bicol Tribal Church Association. We spent time walking the area where the Tribal Bible College will be, figuring out the location for the classroom building, teacher & student houses, and the cooking/dining area.
In the pic below, I'm standing where some of the teacher cabins will be as well as the girls' cabins. The group is standing where the classroom building will go, and then the kitchen area is just below it, with more teachers and the guys' cabins below that.
After walking the area, we spent time discussing how the construction plan will work (trying to share the work opportunities between as many Agta villages as we can) and who would be in charge of what.
And of course, we ate lunch together!
This is Steve talking with our Mangyan tribal partner, Isaias, who will be the president of the Tribal Bible College.
This house is one of the newly-finished cabins for some of our Bugkalot tribal partners who moved to the edge of the land to begin outreaches to nearby Agta villages. This house will be the same kind of cabins that we build for the Bible college teachers and students.
Another exciting thing that happened this week was two land development experts from one of our organization's ministries on another island came to help us think through the other aspect of the use for the land - the livelihood skills and church planting training. We worked with them to scout out where we could build for that training campus, and we talked through the various aspects of what that program could look like.
All in all, a VERY profitable week for sure!
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Then last week, Steve went back down to Bicol, and a couple of days ago, we BROKE GROUND for the Tribal Bible College! More pics and stories to come in the next posts, but just wanted to let you know so that you can rejoice with us and praise God for all He has done and is doing!
