All 60 L-squaders and I met up in Granada for our final Central America debrief after we left the feeding center in Rivas. We spent time worshipping, shopping, discussing the past month and anticipating what Asia had in store for us. The day before we left, our 9 teams were called together and were told of team changes, a task that has been haunting us since the beginning of the Race. We were told of all of the changes, terrified the whole time that Hephzibah would be split up. Instead, we happily welcomed Kaitlyn to our family, going from a family of five to six (seventh returning soon). Hephzibah became Redemption Valley, a welcomed change.
On the morning of the first at 3:30am, we loaded all of our things into a bus and drove to the airport. In the 52 hours we spent traveling to Asia, we have taken five flights, gone through customs twice, hauled our packs through three airports, skipped an entire day (the 2nd), celebrated Amanda's birthday and slept a total of 6 hours. Welcome, jet lag.
The travel days went incredibly smoothly! Our squad bonded with one another and also with the people we came into contact with. Shout out to Mohnish, my new best friend flight attendant! The relationships that we cultivated are exquisite.
Our plan for the month of December in the Philippines has been to do "flood relief". The island we are located on (Mindanao) has been heavily impacted by typhoons over the last year. Our plan was to help clean up and take care of some of the damage caused by the natural disaster. Unfortunately, the morning after we arrived was the beginning of another typhoon. We watched from the safety of our cement building as the category three typhoon sent trees crashing to the ground and tore roofs from houses.
We were taken to Malay Balay, a place that is generally unaffected by the storms on the coast. Once the storm passed, we began working around the area, waiting to hear about the damage in Cagayan, our destination. While we waited, we began our first manual labor task of the Race: hauling dirt. The six of us girls found it strangely satisfying to do exhausting, dirty work.
Part of our draw to the work may have to do with the children who live in a orphanage on the grounds that came and worked with us one afternoon. The beautiful Filipino children are typically very shy, however, these kids are used to Racers, so they had no reservations about coming up and talking to us. They "helped" us shovel the dirt and sang "Call Me Maybe" while we worked together.
But as the Race goes, we did not stay with in Malay Balay for long. Just before we reached our one week mark of being in the country, we packed our packs and headed for the city of Cagayan. With the incredibly recent storm dislocating hundreds of people, we assumed that we would be helping find people homes or fix houses, something tangibly helpful.
In this assumption I had not accounted for one major thing: we are a group of six women. What this means is that in this culture, we are essentially unallowed to do manual labor. So, here we are, living in the middle of a displacement camp. We aren't here to help put up a roof or save people trapped beneath fallen debris. We are here to live in community. Its not particularly safe or convenient for us to be here, but we are once again partaking in the ministry of presence.
We don't know what our choice to live here is like for these people who came here out of desperation. We are told that our being here is a blessing. The fact that we are spending our Christmas, a very sacred holiday, in this displacement camp by choice is unfathomable. If we can bless these people just by being here and living with them, cool! That's totally worth sacrificing a little comfort.
