WRITTEN SATURDAY THE SEVENTEENTH OF JULY.
Location: sat in the jeepnie having run out of gas - somewhere in between the beach and home, Mindanao, The Philippines
Climate: humid, sticky and dark.
Matt's rapping about the situation, the twins are finishing off our food
supplies, Lisa is glowing from the UV light, the other boys are peeing by the curb side and our translators are currently pegging it to the nearest gas station....wherever that may be!
We've had such an incredible day in the paradisific white sand and turquoise waters of Duka Bay, but on the 2 hour ride home we suddenly rolled to a holt; Bedoy and Michael (a couple of the translators) turned round confirmed the petrol gage doesn't work and we’d run out of juice. Hilarious!
So, I thought I'd make the most of the situ and fill you in on our last couple of idyllic days:
So, Thursday afternoon we had a nice chill after lunch and then headed into the steamy centre of town to get to know the street kiddies a bit better. We rocked up and waited a while for them to arrive, and as soon as they did we put Evans “the rubix-cube extraordinaire” to work entertaining the masses. The boys loved challenging him, and challenging themselves to count to 50, giving him the time limit to solve the problem in.
In their grubby, yet very cool clothes and flippy floppies they showed us their incredible somersault skills and enjoyed some buns and donuts until it was time for us to go. We high fived the dozen or so boys and girls, and jumped back into the jeepnie.
That night, after dinner we all sat down on Mary and Ramil's patio and listened to the amazing couple's testimonies.
Ramil told us all about his previous gang and drug dealing lifestyle; his career in pro basketball which lead onto the drug dealing at only 23 years old, and then how he turned it all around when God touched him and spoke to him out of the blue.
Then Mary shared her story; no guns, tattoos or crime, but an extremely honest and real tale about how she struggled with God and her purpose in life, for years. She told of the struggles in her professional dancing career and then explained with huge joy how God made it all clear for her, and how she discovered that "when you start to take God seriously, He takes you really seriously".
How Mary and Ramil got together, engaged after 5 weeks of knowing each other and how they truly adore each other is an incredibly romantic and faith-filled story.
It was wkd to hear how they became such amazing people, both individually and as a unit. Very inspiring.
Yesterday we had another very early rise, and as we sat sleepily eating breakfast a jeepnie pulled up, complete with half a dozen excited Filipinos and 3 inflatable rafts sitting on the top. This was Team Fun Day no 1.
We all squeeezed in and on the jeepnie (one of the instructors ended up sitting on the bonnet!) and took the half hour journey to the rafting start point, on the Cagayan river.
Once kitted out with the very attractive helmets and extremely wedgie-giving life jackets, we grabbed our oars and were ready for orientation.
The orientation was simple and all we needed to know....pretty much, if you fall out, just lean back, lie in the water and relax!
Split into 3 teams, with 2 raft experts to each team we jumped into the rafts and entered number 1 of the 19 white water rapids. Two boats came out upright and full of people, but unfortunately the red boat (the Nathans, Sam, Lisa, Deither (Ramil's 13 yr old son), Chester (the youth pastor) and the two experts) had it's first flip.
Once they’d climbed back on the raft, and the rest of us had finished laughing at them, we went onto rapid number 2 and this time only one boat came out the right way up - yellow boat no1 (Hannah, Doyle, Matt, Jonny, Alex, Jay (translator) and the two experts) flipped this time, and the red boat again went under water. We therefore named the red boat Team Relax - the amount they fell in, they had to "relax" in the water A LOT!!!
We sailed through the incredible rapids, and after 21 kms of awesome scenery (can't even start to attempt to put that beauty into words...so I won't), sailing under a mini fresh water waterfall, seeing a little water snake, swimming in the stills in-between rapids and after a couple of hours we reached the end.
Team relax fell in a grand total of 8 times (with Chester nearly flopping in double that) and yellow boat no1 fell in twice, but the winners - yellow boat no2 (the Bruggeman brothers, Batman (Michael the translator) and Robin (Bedoy the side kick/translator) the two experts and myself) only fell in once. Scorrrre!
There were some points that people got quite scared, but the experts were soooo expert and oooober hot on making sure we were all totally safe at all times. We all came out the other end without any broken bones (just a lot of bruised ones!) and having absolutely loved the experience. Hannah totally won the MVP award of the day for being so up for it and always having a giant smile on her face, even after being sucked under for a bit!
Once out of the water a few of the hardcore members of the team bundled into another jeepnie and drove round the corner to a bridge.
The Filipinos, Matt, Alex, Doyle, Niels, Nathan J, Hannah, Lisa and I then took turns being crazy lunatics jumping off the 30 foot bridge into the river. Ridiculously terrifying yet an immense rush!!!!
We then re-grouped and sat down for a banquet of a lunch in a little hut at the side of the river.
What a day!!!
So, the boys have returned with out water container full of gas, filled up the beast and we’re on our way again.
The next update will be of our day at the beach today (which included scuba diving – flipping wow!) and our remaining day, plus the tales of the travel home....will speak soooooooooooon!
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