It was a difficult decision to cancel all classes for a whole week when we just sent home those 289 evacuees we had housed in our old library, having offered them shelter, food, and medical care for two days. It all happened during the Reading and Research week when Typhoon Ondoy hit us here. Without water, phone/internet, the small number of students and faculty members who were on campus at the time took care of evacuees around the clock. No water to do dishes, or to wash their faces. Nevertheless, a handful of our students, faculty members and staff, in comparison with the number of evacuees we had taken in, 289, had to cook, and took care of them. Can you imagine gathering up rain water, carrying it up and down the stairs to flush toilets? They had to sanitize bathroom floors cleaning up the filth overflowing from the toilets that were not working properly. I wish we had captured with pictures the sunken eyes and haggard look on students and faculty members’ faces –Frank, Dinga, Adam, Rober, Dr. Land, Prof. Hatcher and many more. They had done all these by themselves!!
After the evacuees were sent home with a packages containing clothes, canned food/noodles, and separately a Crisis Care Kit, our students and faculty members had to, again, clean up our flooded chapel where the floor was caked with mud, including the baptistery (we caught a snake in the baptisry!) and prayer rooms. Out soaking in the rain, in the open space in front of chapel, they had to wash the muddied benches, dry and carry them back into the chapel.
Crisis Care Kits
Enough! I thought we had done and gone through enough already, and it was time for our school to function as a school. Although our school was also affected by the flood, and it would cost us a small fortune to fix up the damages done to the walls and housing on our campus, we could still have classes. Going back to a normal life, at least, on our campus would hasten the process of society at large going back to its normal life, after all, I thought. Also it was “depending on the school condition” whether to open school or not, so was the decision made to have classes. There was silence from the majority of people on campus after the announcement was made, about the decision, I, as the Academic Dean made. Soon after, however, I had to reverse the decision I made a few hours before. When I was directed to read a note from the government recommending/declaring suspension of classes, which finished with the sentence “…so that schools can be a resource center” for the communities around them, I felt compelled to change from the decision I had made to have classes, to “not to have classes” so that we could help out our neighbors around us as community.
Our God is a God of compassion...
WOW! The enthusiastic responses to the reversed decision I made I got from students and faculty members were overwhelming. Their responses were pouring in by text messages, “Thank you so much”, “Smart decision you have made”, “Weighty decision to make, yet, you are doing a good job”, “Thank you”, …,. At that, I wanted to exclaim, and I exclaimed, “Long live APNTS!!” I thanked God for such a healthy seminary whose members are interested in practicing what they learn and teach in their classrooms, –to communicate God’s love with people who are in need of God’s love. Taken that those responses are a reflection of how well we are doing and functioning as we are suppose to as seminary, I could not help being proud of all of us at APNTS! I could sense that our campus became revitalized from the state of silence and resignation, to bringing back bright smiles on students’ face, cheerful spirits in everyone around campus! We did not waste any time from the moment the decision was reversed. We called for a meeting for all students and faculty members on campus to discuss how to help affected people around us. We divided into groups to investigate communities around us and to offer help to them, –cleaning, washing and fixing up. Some of us went out to help cleaning up; some of us went out buying and packing things to distribute. On Friday, we invited 200 families to receive rice, canned food/noodles, and clothes, and separately, another 236 children were invited to receive clothes, school supplies (notebooks, pencils, and glue) and slipper, –the things we purchased with the donations made by all of us. We wanted to communicate with those who have lost almost all they have, the love of God who is “compassionate and gracious” who knows what they are going through because our God also experienced the loss of His own Son for our sake. Thanks be to God!!
~Written by Dr. Lee San Young, Academic Dean
