Hello one and all, from the flip side of planet earth – currently in the Philippines! I wanted to write a quick update on what my last few months have looked like, as well as share with you what remains for me in the final two months serving abroad.
December proved to be a pretty taxing experience as my team and I worked in Chiang Mai, Thailand inside the heart of the nations red light district. The month presented a wide range of tasks to be completed, at Lighthouse in Action and Zion Café. We painted and did carpentry work on each floor of the seven story, newly acquired building, served inside their café on the street level and built relationships with its staff. The toughest challenge was easily working inside the bars on the neighboring streets and community, building relationships with the girls trapped and working every night in some of the darkest areas I’ve experienced. I spent Christmas night on an overnight bus to Bangkok, completing logistics duties before we moved on to our next country.
Cambodia came next on our relentlessly changing itinerary, and my new team and I found ourselves in the capital city of Phnom Penh. International Orphan Aid hosted us in both January as well as February, after one of my new teammates became ill just prior to our scheduled travel at the end of January. Collectively, I believe this ministry and our time spent there was my teams favorite of anywhere on the race to this point and was a tremendous blessing to us all.
Every morning the elementary students would slowly file in and we would have bible study, followed by a story and computer time. My favorite little man from any country was a 7-year-old 1st grader named Beau, who I mentored and was able to love on for two full months. Each afternoon, the older students joined us ranging in age from middle school up to university. We would go through a similar rotation with them as well, with the focus for all the students in both age groups to learn English. Our host family was incredible and I came to love every one of them by the time we departed at the end of February.
On top of our team ministry duties while in Cambodia, I put my past business and marketing experience to work and assisted with a startup business that they were implementing. The business, Push Cart Soft Pretzels, will help offset ministry expenses and offer real-life work opportunities for the students including marketing, sales, financials and day-to-day management and responsibility.
For our first time since flying to Thailand in November, we took to the air once again en-route to the islands of the Philippines. My first week was spent serving along two of the most amazing people in the world … my mother Tammy and sister Lindsey. Family Vision Week is a unique opportunity for racers to share the experience of doing international missions alongside loved ones and simply the world race culture in general. My week with them and the other gathered parents and loved ones was easily the most mentally difficult experience of the race. We served in the red light district in Angeles City here in the Philippines, where hundreds of girls stand on stages just waiting to be purchased for an hour, the night or even a week. I feel incredibly blessed to have been able to spend the week with my mother and sister and build some relationships and make memories that will last a lifetime.
Seven days after landing in Manila and spending time with our loved ones, I joined my team in San Mateo, located about an hour and a half outside of Manila at a church camp on the side of a mountain. The past three weeks have been jammed with manual labor and work all day long, building bamboo fences, digging holes, creating garden boxes and handrails, clearing brush, painting and much more. The manual labor was coupled with weekend youth camps, where mostly homeless street children from Manila came overnight and played games, heard bible stories, built fires, got to fly kites, swam in a nearby river and ate wholesome meals. Although the most tiresome month, it has been incredibly rewarding at the same time and gave me a deeper appreciation for my team and how we work so well as a unit together.
The views from the mountainside here are nothing but breathtaking, and I am so thankful to wake up each day to the most beautiful landscape anywhere I’ve seen in the world. I promise I wont complain about sweating too much though – not entirely because I know most of you back home are still buried in snow – but more so because its been a near perfect 77 and sunny all month long. 😉
In just days, we will be on our way to the opposite side of the equator and the AIDS stricken African nation of Swaziland. As of right now it appears that my team will be living and working alone with just our group of seven in the village of Nsoko at the Adventures in Missions base located there. My final month of this worldwide journey will be spent in South Africa and ending in Cape Town – one of the worlds most gorgeous nations.
I believe that’s all for now! More detailed reviews of a couple of my past months will follow this and an outlook on what life post-race might be for me as well. I’m happy and healthy, enjoying ministry but ready to come home.
Love and miss you all back home,
Kev
