Forever Changed in the Philippines
“Aren’t you nervous about the trip?” my wife asked several times leading up to the day I would depart to join Shane in the Philippines. At the time, I didn’t know exactly how to categorize my feelings, but I would say I was more excited rather than nervous.
3/28 (Wed) – Travel day!! I sit down in the gate area in Dallas and a woman across from me notices my PVT shirt. It turns out she and her family have been missionaries in China for the last 13 yrs. They have a missionary friend in Lesotho that had just hosted Racers. Nine hours later the map on the screen in front of my seat indicates we are over the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska with 8 1/2 hours still to go in this winged tube. A moment of anxious nervousness comes and goes. I have an enhanced appreciation for submariners.
3/29 (Thu) – Arrive in Hong Kong and have yet to sleep. That’s ok, I will get some sleep overnight in the hotel…or not.
3/30 (Fri) – I’m not a good sleeper when on travel so let’s throw in a 13 hr time difference to really mess things up. Flight to Manila in the afternoon. The scenes passing by outside my Uber on the way to the hotel in Manila is surreal in a post-apocolyptic movie sort of way. Modern high rises everywhere surrounded by much older buildings in need of substantial repair. People everywhere, trash, clothes hanging/drying on balconies, small children on street corners, more people darting through chaotic traffic, and power poles with what look like hundreds of cables in a jumbled mess. After maneuvering around a Good Friday procession, we make it to the hotel. Dinner with some other parents then sleep….actual sleep.
3/31 (Sat) – Breakfast, then parents pile into shuttles to Quezon City to join our Racers!!! Twenty minutes into the ride, I get an incoming FaceTime. It’s Shane. “Hey Shane, what’s up?” He asks, “When are you going to get here?” I respond, “When our ride gets there.” He loves information-rich answers such as this and replies “I’m just sitting in the lobby and other parents are already here.” My eyes sweat a bit at this. He is excited for me to get there! The feeling is mutual. Another twenty-five minutes and one orange parking cone fatality later, we pull up to the PVT hotel. Before I can get my bag out of the shuttle, Shane is next to me. Over the past seven months we have FaceTimed, texted, and called many times, but it was soooo good to give him a hug. We walk to a nearby Pizza Hut for lunch before returning for an orientation session with Kenny Sacht, founder of Wipe Every Tear. In the afternoon we travel to the WET Safe Houses for dinner, worship and our first opportunity to meet the lovely Philippinas who have escaped the purveyors and predators of Walking Street through the blessed work of WET.
4/01 (Sun) – Easter. He is Risen!! Awesome, energetic worship for the PVT group with the staff of Wipe Every Tear and the Philippinas in their care. Through Middle and High School, hearing and seeing Shane playing the saxophone was a daily occurrence. I had taken for granted how blessed I was to hear him share such a gift. Now, after seven months of silence, he is playing the Kahon, while Andrew Lilly played the guitar during worship. What a beautiful sound! Later that afternoon, Ben Burdette and his dad, Shane and I went bowling at a local mall. I lost count how many times pins fell out of the setting equipment, but we had a great time nevertheless.
4/02 (Mon) – 1st Ministry Day. A two hour bus ride to Angeles City. We have free time to in the afternoon before we meet at Bella Goose Coffee, a half block from the end of Walking Street, for dinner provided by Clark Assembly Church and worship…worship so loud the nearby end of Walking Street had to have heard us. We are formed into small groups of Racers, Parents, Philippinas from WET, and the Holy Spirit (our ringer). We make our way to Walking Street. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me..”(Psa 23:4). We are surrounded by bar patrons, girls working independently, people of all ages selling cigarettes, gum, and pharmaceuticals. We enter our first bar and are seated. It is immediately obvious the girls dancing on the stage are not enjoying themselves and some are clearly scared trying to melt into the shadows at the back and sides of the stage. As a happily married man with a loving wife and daughter back at home and one of my sons sitting next to me, it is discomforting watching the girls dance. Yet, the Spirit tells me which girl to call off the stage to come have a drink with us, to assure her I have a different interest in her versus the typical patron. We talk about her age, her level of education, her interest in starting or completing her college education, if she desires a change in her life. We talk about her being a daughter of Christ who is infinitely loved and who deserves better than her current situation. We tell her about the opportunity to escape the bondage of Walking Street through Wipe Every Tear…safe housing, free education, people who actually care about her! It is normal for the girl to be skeptical of a middle-age man, not much different in appearance than the normal bar patron, that is telling her these things. How can I make her believe?? It is at this point that the angels who have travelled this very path through the darkness of Walking Street and into the light, the Philippinas of Wipe Every Tear begin to talk to the girls in their native dialects validating what they have been told. We tell them of the opportunity join us when we depart on Wednesday to visit the Wipe Every Tear safe houses, have lunch and meet more girls in the program, hear from Kenny about the program and see for themselves it is not a trick as some of the mama Sans and bar owners tell them. We leave the bar with the hope to see the girls we have met on Wednesday morning. We repeat this in a couple more bars before arriving back at our hotel at 1:30am. Tired? Yes. Ready to do it again? YES!!
4/03 (Tue) – 2nd Ministry Day. Debrief with the other Dads. Lunch and another dinner lovingly prepared by Clark Assembly Church. After evening worship, just before we head to Walking Street in our small groups, Shane tells me he and Andrew had gained approval to do street ministry near the entry to Walking Street. I had sensed Shane’s discomfort in the bars the night before, but had not had the opportunity to discuss it with him until now. His interest in street ministry had been evident in his posts and our conversations with him over the last seven months. I decided to continue with bar ministry and told him we would check on he and Andrew through the night. After leaving our first bar of the night, we find Andrew and Shane at the end of the street surrounded by a crowd as they sang and played praise music! What a living example of the fact we have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. (Rom 12:6) The “night” ended when we arrived back at the hotel at 4:30am after making sure no Racers or Parents remained on Walking Street. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the selfless act of the PVT Racer girls who gave up their hotel rooms to bless nineteen bar girls for a safe night of sleep so they would not miss the safe house visit on Wednesday.
4/04 (Wed) – Before we departed Angeles City, three more bar girls had joined the 19 overnighters to visit the Wipe Every Tear safe house. Kenny had cautioned that we not get disappointed if only a couple bar girls take up the offer to visit…that is often can be several months before the girls choose to visit. But 22???? How great is our God?? In worship that evening, we were so excited to hear Kenny’s summary of the girls’ visit to the safe house.
4/05 (Thu) – Parent Going Home Day. In my view, this was anti-climactic. We had already said our goodbyes seven months earlier in Atlanta and we would be seeing our Racers in two more months. We would continue to pray that our Lord would wrap His arms of protection around our young women and men Racers as He had done and as we already knew He would. Later that day, I made a return flight to Hong Kong. Thirteen hour layover. Trying to sleep across three departure gate seats when there is an immovable arm rest every two seats may work for a Racer, but not for this guy. Never again.
4/06 (Fri) – Looooonnng day back across the international date line. 16.5 hrs to Toronto, 4 hr layover, 5 hrs to DFW.
So, now its just over a month until Shane returns home. Shane, thank you for asking me to be a part of this experience. Thank you to my wife, Melanie, for holding down the home front with Katie still in school and our oldest son back home for a week of recovery after surgery. Katie, thank you for allowing me to celebrate your sixteenth birthday early before my travels. Thank you to Adventures in Mission and Wipe Every Tear for an experience I will never forget and from which am forever changed. I find myself frequently thinking about the girls of Wipe Every Tear and the girls still trapped in the sex trafficking industry in Angeles City and innumerable other locations. I pray that we made a difference by spreading a message of hope. As Oswald Chambers wrote, “Our work is not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace…”
Blessings to all,
Mike
