As we were leaving Nicaragua, I got an email from our contact, Jeff, about a typhoon that was supposed to hit the Philippines the day we arrived. Luckily, when we finally arrived in Manila, he said the typhoon had been delayed a little. We were still scheduled to fly to Mindanao with Redemption Valley that day.
We checked in with the local flight company and waited to board our plane to Mindanao. The process was painless – very little security and they don’t even check your ID to let you on the plane. The flight was about an hour and a half.
When we arrived at the “terminal”, we claimed our bags and headed outside. We were met by our island contacts, William and Tara Miller. They are former World Racers that now work in the Philippines full-time with Jeff. We loaded up the van and truck with all 13 of us, and all of our stuff. We stopped for dinner along the way and then finally reached where we would be staying to survive the typhoon.
We were pleasantly surprised to see that we had beds and showers and electricity! We felt blessed to have such high accommodations after 52 hours of travel from Nicaragua.
We crashed pretty quick after we arrived and the next morning when we woke up, the rain had just barely started. We ate breakfast and then the rain really started coming down! Then the power went out, then the water stopped working. It rained all morning.
Kaitlyn and I went with William and Tar into Malaybalay (the nearest city) to pick up some food for our teams. The city was still pretty open, however, a lot of stores didn’t have power. We bought enough food for lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day.
As we were leaving the city, William got a call that said some trees had fallen on the road to the Children’s home. William decided to take us to his house. Kaitlyn and I hung out there with William and Tara, their guests from South Africa, Shanice, Yanau, and G, for a few hours. We played some games and ate food. It was quite nice with the downpour happening outside.
We decided about four hours later to try to drive to the children’s home. All the trees had been cleared (in record time!), and the rain had pretty much stopped. William told us we were in the eye of the storm and there would be more to come!
When we got back, we were greeted by our hungry teammates who had showered and played in the rain all day! We waited and waited but the other half of the storm never came.
After the typhoon, there was a lot to be done. Several trees had fallen – many on houses.
We brought materials to some of the nearby homes that had damage due to Pablo. We worked hard at the children’s home for a few days moving dirt since we were unable to go to our official ministry site because of damage to roads due to Pablo.
