7 years ago
Mar 17, 2007
The Philippines was so wonderful. Thank all of you who were praying for us, everything come together incredibly. The entire trip was full of great ministry, fellowship, good times, and not as good times, but overall God was in it all. And because of that everything was perfect.
We left on Friday, March 9th. We flew from Okinawa to Taipei to Manilla. In Taipei I practiced my Mandarin some. That was fun. We stayed in Manilla for one night at some big hostel type thing. We had some sweet prayer and worship. Then we relaxed:
On Saturday, March 10th. We got up really early and flew to Iloilo. We took one of these bus/taxi things from the airport to the hostel:
Iloilo is kind of a college city. There are a lot of universities there. It's also has some tourist traffic. So Calvary Chapel Bible Fellowship
has a lot of young people in the church. We got to hang out with all our family there. The afternoon we got there a lot of college people were meeting at the church from discipleship houses around the area. Getting to know everyone was great:
Sunday morning we led worship, helped with a youth meeting in the afternoon, and had an afterglow at night. It was a packed day of wonderful ministry. We had some great lunch, BBQ chicken, coconut shakes, and buko-halo for desert.
This was the desert (buko-halo is a coconut with a mixture of crushed ice and all sorts of things):
At night I got to eat balut. Imagine a duck. This duck lays an egg. Then let the baby duck grow in the egg for 21 days. After that boil it and eat it. That's what I had. First you crack the top of the egg open and drink the embryonic fluids. (It tastes like soup.) But then you peel the rest of the egg off and find this little duck with feathers and everything. You roll this duck around in rock salt and proceed to eat it in one bite, otherwise it falls apart and you don't want that. Feeling the feathers go down your throat and chewing up the skull are the two worst parts. Other than that it just tastes like hard boiled egg with bones.
Monday morning we went on a boat for several hours. We were all blow away at where we were. 2 years ago I never could have imagined that I would ever be on a boat in the Philippines having the time of my life.
We also had great food. The mangos were the best mangos I have ever had. I'm not even kidding. We also ate this sticky rice with caramelized coconut on top. Oh, and it was also really good to take a bite of sweet sticky rice and a bite of fresh mango. The watermelon was also out of the world.
That night we went shopping. I don't like shopping but it was fun to hang out with everyone some more. Some of us piled in RJ's jeep.
On Tuesday we headed home. I was totally blessed by the trip. God has really made us all one big family no matter where we live. Ukraine, America, Asia, or the Moon!
Amen.
(All the pictures were stolen from e3missions, Daniel, or RJ. I didn't take a single picture on the trip. I always feel like I will miss out on something if I'm busy taking pictures.)
