Wow! It seems like it took forever to get here. Oh wait – it did. When we landed in Manila, we met Jeff who is the WR contact here in the Philippines. He is wonderful. He planned out all of our ministries for all eight teams. He met us at the airport, provided us transportation, and collected all of our passports to apply for visas while we are at ministry this month.
He told us that my team and one other team, Hephzibah – who would also be on a different island with us, needed to load our stuff up and drive to a different terminal of the airport for our last flight. As we drove through a little bit of the city, we saw their little buses for public transportation, different food shops and other new things attributed to the culture.
We arrived at the terminal, unloaded all of our bags and began the check-in process. We found out that they had a weight limit that we hadn’t been informed about. All of us were about 25 pounds over-weight. They said that would cost about one dollar per pound. We told them what we were doing and asked if they would consider letting the extra weight slide. They weren’t too fond of that idea.
Jeff said we should wait them out. So we stood in front of their counter for 15 minutes, and then they said we could check our bags without being charged. Praise the Lord! It was incredible. We got some lunch, and then boarded our plane headed to Mindanao.
After five flights and a couple hours of driving, we finally arrived in our ministry city after 52 hours and 17 minutes! We are at a temporary lodging location due to the incoming typhoon. We should be able to leave here tomorrow after the storm passes to head to our ministry site in the city.
