Hello Brothers and Sisters in Christ!
It’s been a long time since I updated on what’s going on in my life and I do apologize for that! The past month and a half I’ve been in Tacloban, Philippine’s working with Kids International Ministry’s – The Lighthouse. Our schedule has been eight hours of construction for three days of the week, which was some pretty hard work! Two days of the week we go and do feedings in the villages in the area and feed them Lugaw. I absolutely love the feedings and its been definitely been my favorite part about being in Tacloban. One day of the week we have cleaning which we have the day to clean The Lighthouse and do some clean up outside on the house too. We usually have time during the day to go and play some basketball with the kids in the community’s here and just love on them, which has been awesome. It’s been a great month and a half here. I’m going to miss being in Tacloban so much and it now has such a huge part of my heart. We will be leaving on the 24th back for Manila where we get have super fun 32-hour bus ride back. We will be celebrating thanksgiving together as a squad and then we will be off to debrief. Swaziland is approaching fast! Were leaving December 2nd and I’m not quite sure I’m ready to leave this amazing country, it’s truly captured my heart.
This whole month we have been preparing for the one-year anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan. Which was one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded. Tacloban was hit the hardest by the typhoon and completely devastated the area here. On the 8th of November we commemorated the anniversary here at the lighthouse. We woke up at 5am and had a sunrise service and just had time to pray and worship the Lord. Later in the morning we went out to a couple mass graves in the area and just ministered to the people there. The mass grave that my team went to had over 400 bodies at the grave and nobody actually knows who is buried there so many people set up graves there hoping their loved ones were in there. One of the guys was telling me when he was here in Tacloban in January he would see children sleeping on the graves because the children were parentless and they believed their parents were buried there. It’s heartbreaking to hear these stories, there is still so much pain and hurt so prayers for the people of Tacloban would awesome! That day over 1000 people came to lighthouse and we were able to minister and show them the love of Christ, truly a incredible day that we had here and so thankful that I was here for this.
We just were able to go to a deserted island for two days of rest after a really hard month for some rest and relaxation and boy was that needed! We took a ferry to get to the island and I was walking around on the boat and my leg fell through the floor and it got stuck. One of the workers had to pull out the floorboard to get my foot out since it was stuck so badly. My leg is fine just a bruise there but I was like wow what a way to start the trip! Get there and having a great time and than I got my phone wet.. Put my iPhone in the bag of rice and was determined to not worry about it and have a good time. Start of the morning on the island and took a morning swim and on my way out of the water I cut my toe on some coral and it was a nasty gash. So that day I just relaxed, was able to pray and read my bible, and hang out in my eno. God was definitely telling me I needed to sit back, relax and be in the word for our time on the island and it may have been the three best days I’ve ever had because of that 🙂
Will be posting two more blogs within the next couple of days so keep your eye out! Sorry for bad writing skills and not blogging as much, trying to do my best! Thank you everyone for the prayers and the support on the trip so far. Please pray for my squad as we prepare to leave Tacloban and getting ready to leave for Swaziland. Would love to hear from you guys or get some encouraging notes. Love and miss you all so so much. Thanks for following my journey you guys are the best! 🙂
Peace and Love, Ariel
