I and three other members from our parish attended the Institute of Pastoral Development's
Scripture Ventures at Tagaytay. The courses were held from July
20-24. There were three courses to choose from so I and my
companions distributed ourselves to each of those courses. I and
Ben Tindoy attended TRAIL ("Training the Trainers"), Rose went to SLT
("Servant Leadership Training") while Evelyn went to JOD ("Joy of
Discovery"). Our main objective was to be trained so as to help
our parish later on establish its BEC program.
The participants we found out came from as far as Kalibo, Cebu and
Zambales. The atmosphere was friendly and the trainers were
professionals were making available to the Church their expertise in a
strictly voluntary work. Teachers and students didn't have a hard
time jelling with one another. There was even a point where I saw
Cora, our course moderator, take up the guitar and help in group
animation! The courses were themselves interesting and
engaging. Evelyn was telling us how during the last session of
JOD, all the students and teachers were moved to tears by the
presentation of the last lesson: the crucifixion narrative in Mark.
There were a lot of high moments during those five days in
Tagaytay. There was Cultural Night for example where the
students, distributed to different cultural groups made presentations
based on a bible passage. Our group (Laguna, Caloocan, QC)
presented a mime of the Parable of the Sower in Mark and was quite well
accepted. Apart from these "high moments" we also met new friends
who contributed to the gaiety of those five days.