PAMAS - January
- Ethan Currier
- Feb 4
- 4 min read
January started off with a New Years Party at the SULADs campus 3 or 4 minutes from the Mindanao base. We had a couple of worships in the afternoon and then everyone brought a bunch of food for supper. After supper, there were gifts like clothing and such that the families could take if they needed anything.
On Jan. 2 I went to Cagayan de Oro (CDO) to renew my visa. I took the bus there and met with Terry, one of the PAMAS workers who took me to immigration. Afterwards, he took me back to the bus station and I took a bus back to Valencia City.
Most of January was preparing for strategic planning. This is a relatively new thing here at PAMAS, sort of like an orientation for all the bases to know how to do this every year. We have still gotten nowhere near finishing everything, but we made significant progress. Besides the things I normally do like weed eating, burying pipeline, cooking, cleaning, etc, I helped with making procedures and job descriptions for the aviation department and people from other departments were working on the same thing. We still have a long ways to go, but we have a lot done.
Everyone from the Mindanao base went to strategic planning except for two people who stayed behind to watch over things here at Mindanao. The day that we traveled there, the whole group piled in the van and truck carrying our luggage. We drove to the Davao airport. On the way, we stopped at a sort of overlook and ate our lunch there and not long afterwards we stopped at a carving of an eagle that was really cool. Once we got to Davao, we got into the airport and waited for our flight. We flew to Puerto Princesa, Palawan, and some people from the Adventist mission there came to get us with a couple of vans. We stayed overnight at the hotel sort of thing they have and left in the morning. We picked up our breakfast at the Adventist hospital in the city and arrived at the Palawan base about noon and ate lunch there. That afternoon was basically an orientation for the meetings.
I stayed in an apartment with Andrew Hosford while we were there in Palawan. On Thursday morning, the aviation department met and we worked on a lot of our goals and went over a few procedures. That afternoon, there wasn't much of anything concerning us, so I went to swim at a waterfall with Andrew, The Hoeings (A missionary family in Mindanao), and some kids from the base. It was a lot of fun.
Friday was some more general meetings and in the afternoon they talked through some stuff pertaining to the government as it sounds like there might be some cooperation between PAMAS and the government helping them with fuel and whatnot and PAMAS helping even more with medvac flights.
Sabbath morning we had church at the base and in the afternoon we went to the ocean. On our way to the ocean we stopped by the new property where they're planning on building the school to show it to everyone. When we got to the ocean, we explored around the rocks a little bit and then had worship and supper, and then went back to base.
On Sunday, everyone went to the same waterfall I had gone to earlier. After breakfast, Mrs. Hoeing stood up and asked "How was your breakfast?" to which everyone responded "Great!" and she replied "Let's put it to good use then!". It was a hilarious exchange and we joked about it all day long. We helped them pick up coconuts and throw them in the dumptruck before we went to go swimming. When we got to the waterfall, some of us climbed up the side and followed the creek for a ways upstream. It was a lot of fun. That afternoon was some much needed rest after all the meetings.
On Monday when we headed back to Mindanao, we piled in the vans again and left for Puerto Princesa. Along the way we stopped at a couple of places, a crocodile farm and a park I think, but I went with a couple missionaries from Columbia to work on my visa. Unfortunately, I didn't have all the paperwork that I needed because I hadn't planned on working on my visa, so I wasn't able to renew it, but once we got back to Mindanao I went back to CDO to renew it. That evening when we went to the airport, we had to wait a while before going in because our flight was pretty late. While we were waiting we had a fun time playing Uno. We flew from Puerto Princesa back to Davao, and we stayed at an Adventist mission there overnight. In the morning we drove back to the Mindanao base.
This last Sabbath, we went back to Natampod for church and some of the afternoon. It was very nice there and the villagers were very friendly. Being in the mountains, it was also a lot cooler than down in the lower lands.
Please pray for God's blessing as we continue to grow in PAMAS. We are in sore need of more pilots and mechanics and we have a huge amount of organization that we are attempting for this year.
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