We just finished what we call “launch.” The purpose of launch is to bring us back together as a group (since we have only met the people that we will be living with for the next year one time) and have some bonding time and preparation time before we travel the world together. Traditionally launch takes place in the first country that we are in and we all stay together as a squad for a few days before splitting up and going to our ministry locations. However, they tried something new this time around and we stayed in “Little Mexico” in Gainsville, GA for three days.
Little Mexico is actually pretty close to staying in a third world country. All 45 of us slept on the floor in a church in the heart of the community. We were allotted $6 per person per day for food and had to learn to make it work within our teams. There were toilets at the church we stayed at but in order to shower, we walked 25 minutes to a nearby hotel. My favorite part about it was the Mexican food. We ate at a local restaurant and had burritos and French fries off of the kids menu for 2.50 per person. What a deal!
We also had some speakers talk to us about things like having a positive attitude and being selfless while on the race. They stressed that the race is what you make of it and if you choose to have a poor attitude for 11 months, then you will miss out on the joy that you can have if you make the best of all situations without complaining. After all, we are not here to life the life of luxury for 11 months, we are here to serve the people we will meet and love them and our teammates the way God loves us.
On Friday we left Little Mexico to travel to the Philippines! We left on Friday morning and flew from Atlanta to Los Angeles. We had a 6 hour layover in LA and then flew 13 hours to Hong Kong. Then we flew from Hong Kong to Manila. We arrived in Manila on Sunday morning (including the 12 hour time difference). I think we completely missed Saturday. We boarded a plane on Friday night from LA and 13 hours later it was Sunday morning in Hong Kong. Right now our whole squad is staying in one of the ministry locations in Manila and tomorrow we will all leave for our individual ministry locations.
It has been awesome to be in Manila so far! They run a salon out of the place that we are staying and they encouraged us to support the people in the salon by using the services, so I got foot spa and pedicure yesterday!
