Philippines Part 1

Where to begin?

Last time we came to Manila, we missed our first flight completely and had to come back the next day and arrived 2 days later than expected. We were bound and determined to not miss the flight this time.

Wednesday-Friday

We had no problems on the first flight, but Jeff and I were a bit dizzy, so we took some Dramamine in hopes of it helping on our 2nd flight to Tokyo. When we got on the plane, we both fell asleep. Upon waking up we were both wondering why we weren't in the air. We taxied around the airport for about an hour because some of our fuel injectors weren't working. When we got back to the gate to wait for them to be repaired, the A/C went out in the cabin and the temperature got up to 95 degrees. We had been on the ground so long that our flight crew timed out and a new one had to be called in. We were 5 hours late leaving San Fransisco, so we missed our connecting flight to Manila. We had booked a flight for the following morning and were hoping to get a hotel voucher for the night and stayed awake much of the 10 hour flight. When we got to Tokyo we found out that we needed to go through customs, get our bags, take a bus to another airport, check in again, and board a plane for a 1:30 AM flight to Manila that got in at 4:50 AM. We were unable to sleep much of the flight and arrived tired, but attended feedings, went to Devotion, played basketball, took measurements of the children's home kids, and did everything possible to stay awake until 8:00 so we could sleep.

Saturday

We didn't do much on Saturday. We had our orientation with Jeff Long (the guy who started KIM) and when he found out about Jonathan's passion, he called his people on another island and said he was getting on a plane Sunday morning and we booked him tickets to Mindanao, Tacloban, and a return flight here. One of the girls from the Children's Home was leaving to go back to her mom after 11 years in the care of the Children's Home. We walked around the neighborhood and played with some of the kids and talked with the locals.

Sunday

We attended church where our Missionary Friend, Vince Burke, has been heavily involved for a while with a group from Adventures in Missions. After church we went to Chili's and went shopping at the market/mall. That was an interesting adventure. In the area where we are, most people barely have money to live, but where the mall is, we encountered many people who were wearing head coverings and many people who were either women trying to look like men, or men trying to look like women. We finally went swimming and I (Teri) jumped off of their 4 meter platform into the pool! It was more scary than I expected. We also have been doing the evening devotional time at the children's home.

There are several teams here with us:
Adventures in Missions has 18 people with them
There was a high school team from Hong Kong, but they left and a new team of 26 from Hong Kong arrived Sunday night.
A group of 4 from Wheaton is here for 7 weeks.
A family from California is here with 2 friends (5 people).
Some ministry partners are here with us, and 2 very sweet ladies from Australia are here individually.