Location: Mindanao, Philippines
Today marks day three in Mindanao, which is amazing because it feels like we’ve already covered a ton of ground. Thus far we have worked construction on a building for the new children’s home, gone to an amazing church service, been sight seeing, met the kids at the children’s home and ate some crazy delicious food. Whew! It has truly been amazing and I can hardly wait to see what God has for us as the days go by.
I already have some great stories, which I am sure i will share with you soon, but I want to take some time to tell you about one instance where God clearly made his presence known.
In the airport leaving for Mindanao there was a HUGE line to get checked in. We spoke with some folks and they said we would have no trouble making it to the front in time to catch our flight. Boy, were they wrong. We ended up being hard pressed for time as we frantically got our bags checked and rushed to make it through security.
Blessing #1: Surprisingly, they sent an escort for us to insure that we catch our flight. He led us through the necessary hoops to try to make it to our gate. Once we got to security we were rushed to the front of the line to go through. AMAZING!
Dan and I were the last to go through, and both happened to have a ton of canned goods in our carry-ons for the children’s home. Apparently canned goods are not acceptable (who knew?) in our carry-ons, so they made us empty them all out. We explained that we didn’t have time to check them and left them all there and we sprinted off to our gate.
Blessing #2: We made it to our plane on time! Amazing. Everyone was so accommodating in waiting for us. Truly surprising for an airline.
Blessing #3: While trying to quickly settle in, the gentleman who escorted us rushed onto the plane to ask if we had an extra bag. Confused we looked around and said no. He said okay and walked away. Mysterious. A stewardess came back a few minutes later and handed us a ticket stub for our extra bag. She told us they had found a trash bag and put all of our canned goods in it. REALLY?! We were blown away.
I’ve heard people say that there is something special about this squad, that we have the Lord’s favor (Isaiah 61), but I guess God thought we needed to hear him say it. What an amazing thing to hear on our first day out of the gates. Truly AMAZING!!!!
P.S. Here is what we look like in the Philippines!
