These are the words of The Rev. Vincent H. Gowen, in his book “Sunrise to Sunrise”, an account of, among others, his life and work as a missionary to China and to the Philippines. Rev. Gowen arrived in the Philippines in 1927 and served as the first resident priest of St. Benedict’s Church in Kin-iway, Besao, until he and his family were interned in 1942 until 1945 by the Japanese at (then) Camp Holmes in Benguet.

 

St. Benedict’s mission was already established when Rev. Gowen arrived in the area. The first Anglican service in Besao was held at the presidencia in November 1906. In 1910, a crude church was built in Besao Barrio [now Brgy. Besao East] dedicated to St. Benedict and the first service was held in March of that year. After two years, the church was transferred to (then) sitio Kin-iway, which eventually became the poblacion of the municipality, but it continued to be served by clergy stationed in Sagada, Mountain Province. It was only in March 1913 that Deaconess Anne Hargreaves came to work as the first resident missionary in the area. Upon her arrival, Deaconess Hargreaves opened St. James School which became the core of mission work in the area. She served until her death in 1923. In Sunrise to Sunrise, Rev. Gowen, upon his arrival in Besao, recalled the work of the deaconess in the following words:

 

 

Gowen was then stationed in China when he accepted the invitation to serve in the Philippines. It was supposed to be a short term engagement which he expected to last for a year. His first visit to Besao made him hope that the sojourn could even be cut shorter. He described the area as a “place nobody had heard of.”  Continuing on his reflections, however, he later said “Not only would I refuse the chance, if offered, of removing to the stone-girt comforts and society of Sagada, but I began to doubt whether I would ever return to China. In unbelievable fullness the years ahead confirmed the rightness of my choice”. And after 14 years of living with the people of this mission, he wrote, “…it was to be my home, so deeply the centre of my affection that, even after years of separation, no other home can supplant it in my heart, in the love I feel for its people.”

 

St. Benedict’s is now almost a hundred years old. As it prepares for its centennial, which shall be celebrated in April 2010, another missionary has arrived to join its flock and re-live and renew the friendship and sharing and acknowledgement of faith and affirmation of hopes  that both the late Deaconess Anne Hargreaves and the Rev. Vincent H. Gowen and his family cultivated and nurtured with the people of this municipality. Melanie Jianakouplous, who describes herself in her blog, as an Episcopalian from St. Louis  who is currently a postulant for the priesthood in the Diocese of Missouri, arrived in Besao on July 4, 2009 as a missionary under TEC’s Young Adult Service Corp [YASC]. 

 

It was highly providential that Melanie’s name was at the top of the list of possible YASC volunteers for this year given by TEC to the ECP. At that time, the ECP’s Community Based Development Program established a Food Processing Center in Besao as a tripartite venture between the Municipal Government, Besao Multi-Purpose Cooperative and the Diocese of Northern Philippines. The center seeks to consolidate the various community livelihood projects within the municipality and expands and enhances them through centralized packaging and marketing of processed foods, upgrading of the food processing industry and continuous pursuit of product development and upgrading. During the planning of the venture in February, Mr. Richard Harper, a business consultant who has volunteered for the Anglican Board of Mission [ABM] to periodically visit the ECP for business and project consultancies, pointed out that it would be crucial for the center to engage a person who has a business management background on a full-time basis. This posed a big problem because the center could not afford the cost of such engagement. And so when the list of YASC volunteers was presented to the ECP, the recent graduate of the University of Missouri with a business degree in non-profit management was the top choice and consequently almost “hauled off” to join the center.

 

Melanie is presently the manager of the Besao Food Processing Center, which has started to intensify its activities by producing pineapple jams and jellies, peanut butter, banana chips and ketchup, fruit juice concentrates, etc. But she has also taken other significant tasks as Sunday School teacher for St. Benedict’s and member of its junior Episcopal Churchwomen [ECW] as well as teacher of English, history, economics and technology and livelihood for St. James High School. As a champion swimmer in her school days, she has even volunteered to coach the swimming team of Mountain Province.

 

Only on her second month in the country, Melanie has already considered the municipality as her home, whose picture she described in her blog, as follows: “This is the view of my barangay (neighborhood) from St. Benedict’s Church. The name of the barangay is Kin-iway. It is the capitol of the Municipality of Besao and about 97% Anglican! Besao is located in the western part of the Mountain Province of Northern Luzon in the Philippines. There are about 300 people who live here in Kin-iway. There are no street names or house numbers here because everyone knows everyone else, where they live, and who they are related to.”

 

Companionship, understood as people of diverse cultures and colors eating, praying and sharing stories and hopes together, is now fully lived out by Melanie and the congregation of St. Benedict’s as it had been almost a century ago with Deaconess Hargreaves and Rev. Gowen and the g-stringed and tapis-clad people of the thatched villages that surrounded the mission in those early years.