La fin.

Location: England
Climate: English...i.e. grey clouds – cardigan weather.


Once upon a time a group of fourteen young, eager travellers stepped off Cebu’s extremely air conditioned plane and onto Cagayan De Oro soil/tarmac. The next 12 days were incredible; they had the trip of their lives. Now they’ve been returned to where they came from, but the memories will last a lifetime. Here’s how it all ended....

So, let’s return to Friday the 16th of July:
We’d all enjoyed such an incredible day of rafting/swimming/”relaxing” down the amazing white water rapids, and were pooped! We got home, showered, changed and had a couple hours of chill time before snacks and then off to youth group.
Youth group’s officially meant to start at 6pm. We arrived at half 6 and by 7pm it was still just us, our trusty translators and two terrified looking Filipino teens. At half 7 Chester pulled up in the jeepnie, FULL of a little less terrified looking youthies, who filed into and filled up the car port style church building.
Our “40 minute” slot turned into an incredibly epic 3 hour meeting, complete with intense and amazingly loud worship, skits, a Bruggeman talk, washing feet and an incredible ministry time. After we’d successfully made almost every human in a 2 mile radius cry, the meeting was brought to a close with a gigantic group photo, and sad goodbyes. It’s amazing how the obstacle of language is no problem, when the Holy Spirit gets a moving!
We walked the 200 metres home to the hotel and all fell straight into bed. Such an incredible day.

Saturday the 17th of July:
Another early rise, and early breckie. Another group hop into the jeepnie, but this time a 2+ hour road trip to our next Team Fun Day!
The drive was long, bumpy and beautiful as we followed a coastal road north towards Duka Bay. We were grateful to eventually arrive and wake our bums up, then we turned around and saw what can only be described as paradise; white sand and turquoise ocean full of crystal clear water.
We hired out a thatch roofed gazebo for the day, got changed and hit the sea. It was amazing.

Our incredible translators got busy on the bbq, while half of the group gathered for something very cool – meeting Edwardo, aka, our scuba diving instructor!!!
After an hour’s basic training and playing in the shallows with the scuba dudes, we paired up and went out 2 at a time to check out the Filipino reef. Between eating the out of this world bbq-ed pork in amazing Ramil marinade (Hannah had her special person packed lunch) and playing in the waters, pairs came back from the reef just buzzing from what they’d seen.
I was privileged enough to dive with Lisa and Nathan J, and my word that sea bed’s just astounding! We saw hundreds upon hundreds of stunning fish, we fed angel fish, said hello to Nemos, tickled the weeds and even held blue starfish. The best experience ever...and to think; there’s all that beauty and more under the rest of that bay, the rest of the Philippine sea and all the oceans of the world. God’s imagination and expertise is rather impressive, ey?!

At about 4pm we jumped back into the jeepnie and headed home. After some crazy driving, an empty fuel tank, a lot of giggles and four hours, we were home again.
That evening was a free night where we invaded the local mall once more, and after the party on the roof being rained off, we all hit the sack pretty early.

Next day = Sunday = church.
The group split into half, as we had two different churches to speak at; Alex and his merry men headed back to the Canitoan area where House Of Joshua will be, while Martin and the rest of us partied on down to the rubbish dump again.
Both services went really well, with a lot of not quite in tune yet extremely passionate worship, skits and puppet shows leading up to the sermons.
In Canitoan Alex spoke, using the rest of his team mates as props, they shared an incredibly moving ministry time together and then they all went to one of the church member’s house for a beautifully hospitable lunch.
At our little tin roofed shack, Martin gave a very encouraging word, enjoyed the applause and sat down. The pastoress then got up on the stage, said a lot of things in Fili and then asked us to bow our heads and prepare for the day’s word. Martin had just given the word. Error. ...we all looked at each other with a mixture of awkward laughter and “help” in our eyes. None of us knowing what to do, as we’d just done all that we’d prepared (and taken an hour doing it!), but thankfully our fearless leader stood up. With the whole church’s eyes on Michiel he stood behind the lectern and fumbled through the bible, making some excuse about the bookmark falling out. The poor dude amazingly wacked out a brilliant preach (that sounded suspiciously similar to the one he’d given the week before, at Ramil and Mary’s church!) and saved the day. Hilarious!

Once all fed and before slipping into that Sunday-afternoon feeling, we jumped in the jeepnie once more and headed towards Boys Town. On our schedule, that afternoon was down as “free” e.g. the mall/sleeping/drinking mango shakes, but because our youth are just incredible, they insisted we make the most of things and visit the boys again.
We spent the afternoon playing a multitude of ball games, getting tested by the boys at stupidly difficult Maths problems (go Hannah showing her skills), and just being able to enjoy a bit more fun with the gorgeous community of lads. We then gave out cookies and juice, and said our goodbyes...
The goodbyes had started; sad times.

That evening was the farewell party (and not an engagement party anymore. Poor Doylie!), and it was THE most perfect end to a perfect trip:
Unfortunately the pig population in the Phili is now pretty low, as we wacked out another spit roasted squealer, and dug in to an amazing feast. Finished with the most unbelievably lush dessert in the world (mango float is immense!) and washed down with litres of fizzy pop, it was quite the meal.
We then gathered together for a bit of a de-brief chat from Mary (which we are now so thankful for, as discovering the importance of the reserve culture shock warnings!) and a prayer time led by Chester and Ramil. Such a precious time, and very few dry eyes left by the end of it!

The night was ended with last street basketball and street games, with a curb-side ice cream break in the middle. Precious precious times (proof of this: tears are falling right now, as I reminisce about it!).

Another good, yet very short night’s sleep led to packing. Booooo!
Once Ramil and Mary’s front patio was full of suitcases and sad faces, we headed to the jeepnie once again...but the party wasn’t over yet – we still had the morning to kill, and we were doing that in the best way possible: back to the beach, but this time with another roast pig and the street boys tooooo! Yeeyyyyyyy!
We enjoyed a hilarious few hours splashing, chasing, chucking, burying, eating and playing with the incredible kids. After we’d beaten them at footy, and then been thrashed by the Fili’s at their own games (the sight of Michiel tackling a dude on crutches was pretty special) we’d run out of time, and had to head home. It was the most amazing last morning.

We pulled up outside Ramil and Mary’s house to find buckets and hoses, ready for a giant street shower (in our swimming togs, mind!) to de-sand. It was very very very funny!
Once dry and smelling slightly better, we grabbed our luggage and headed into that beautiful jeepnie for the very last time. As the rain poured, we kept spirits high with the normal comedy that flooded from our amazing team.

At the airport, our wonderfully remarkable translators did their final act of beautiful service by helping unload the bundles of bags, and after a final goodbye and lots and lots of cuddles (and tears, again!) we walked back into the Cagayan airport.

Once again we got through check ins and inspections without any hitches, and before we knew it, were back in Manila.
Emotions were on over drive as we eventually got through to the international departures. A mixture of hunger, tiredness, smelliness, mourning and boredom was not the best recipe for the mission of finding the least salmonella filled snacks in the deserted airport, but by the grace of God we got through it without any punch ups!

We then boarded our plane to Dubai, and left the spectacular country that is The Philippines.

I’m not really sure what happened on that flight, as I slept 7 hours of it (lush!), but I hear there was turbulence and a few exciting moments. Rumour had it that Milan slept the whole thing. What a lad! What a relief for the amazing Mrs B!

Back in Dubai we had three hours to kill, and so spread throughout the airport, finding food, sun burn relief spray and anything else that we were needing.
Most of the team were shattered, already missing the Phili, getting smellier and just wanting to be home now, and yet it was still such a laugh.
We boarded the finale plane and set sail for the last leg of the journey. Now, this journey d-r-a-g-g-e-d, but we made the most of it by watching silly amounts of films, playing plane trivia (which of course, Kirkup won by miles!), interrupting each other’s films by calling their in-flight telephones, and discussing the mushrooms that the dude next to me had bought and got very high on in Bali. Funny!
After 7 hours stuck on that plane we finally came to a holt on English run-way. We were home!

Once we’d rounded up the many bags and ventured up and down the lifts numerous times until we found the exit, a lovely familiar face of Mr Harding stepped out of the mini-bus and rescued us from airport hell.
The drive back to Fareham was quiet and weird – the lack of jeepnie, and jeepnie driving rules was very evident.

We pulled up into the FCC car park to find a handful of smiley parents ready to squeeze their kids to death.
With a final team time prayer huddle, we all schnuggled each other til we were blue in the face, slapped Doyle’s sunburnt back a few times and then split for the first time in what felt like a very long time of being together.

It was good to be home, but so sad to have left, and very strange to have the team split.
We’ve nearly been home a week now (ridiculous!), and as people get back into the normality of life, things are a bit strange....more on that in the next update.

Thanks for ready again. Will pop up everyone’s fav five minutes, and a few final remarks before this blog’s completely finished – stay tuned! xx