Tyler – Luzon Media
After five days of orientation, seven for team leaders, we should have felt like our trip was beginning, and the realization that we would be gone for two months should have set in. It hadn’t. The Open Door orphanage team and I discussed this thought on our way to the Atlanta airport. Orientation had been an amazing experience and we had built strong bonds with our team members. It had felt like the most amazing church retreat EVER, and we should be headed back to our houses now. The 150+ Nehemiah Teams members had been shuttled to Atlanta in four different trips – the first at 1:00 a.m.! Our group was the next to last to leave, and once everyone had arrived at the airport, we did another reality check. It still didn’t seem like we would be across the world in the next few…well, next LOTS of hours.
The flight was the first time on an airplane for some Nehemiah Teams members, but everyone handled it beautifully. Once landing in Los Angeles - the weather really is perfect there by the way - we did another check. It still didn’t seem real. We stuffed down some food, called the parentals, and waited for a couple of hours for our flight.
We boarded the HUGE plane, took our seats, and waited to arrive in the Philippines. Then we waited some more. Waited. Waited. You could get up from the computer now, go grab a cup of coffee and come back - we were still waiting. When we couldn’t sleep anymore we decided to all watch at least one in flight movie together. After five years of flying, we landed, examined our swollen feet, and headed to immigration. It still didn’t seem real.
We claimed our bags, exchanged our money, and were met by Ate Nanette – the sweetest little Filipino lady walking the planet. She met us, joked with us, and took us to one of the biggest malls in Asia – you would love her too now, right? We went to the mall to wait for Victoria – she wouldn’t arrive until 6 p.m.
Traffic in the Philippines is terrifying. There are lanes, but hey, why use them? Tricycles, taxis, and Jeepnies (public transportation) dominate the roads, and drivers pretty much make their own rules. We got to the mall, I released my death grip on the seat, and we began our Filipino experience.
Naturally as Americans, our first significant feelings of our trip began in a mall. There are NO white people here. You could try to find them, but I’ll go ahead and save you the trouble. Therefore…we kind of stood out. People stared, pointed, and smiled at us a lot (we hope out of happiness and not our ignorance). The mall was HUGE. There is not a font type or size I could use to express the size of this place. We were there for nine hours, and we saw about half of it.
I made the first stupid mistake. We saw a Vibram FiveFinger shoe store. I got excited. I saw the pair I wanted, and saw the price $950 pesos. I get really excited – that’s less than twenty dollars. I proudly said “Bag them. I want these!” The register did something weird. The price on it was 5950 pesos. Dumb me thought the 5 was a $! So a very embarrassed me had to tell the worker to put them back and I booked it out of that store!
Later, we picked Victoria up, heard the epic tales of her travels (see below) and ate at McDonalds. You can get rice with ANYTHING by the way.
Victoria's Journey:
(Victoria: I left orientation at 5:30 a.m. to catch my 11:45 flight to Houston. This began my 36 hour trek to the Philippines. The sixteen of us who took this alternate route to the Philippines quickly grabbed some Starbucks coffee and a hot dog at Nathan's in Houston, and then boarded the 24 hour flight to Singapore with a 1-hour stop in Moscow - lovely. Twenty-four hours on a plane is pretty terrible...no other way to put it. The food has to be some of the worst smelling substances on the planet, and the polite people of the airline thought it would be best to feed it to us every three hours. By the time we landed in Singapore, I was starving, nauseous, and dirty. As soon as I stepped off the plane though, my attitude completely changed.
All of us immediately fell in love with Changi Airport in Singapore. We spent our 8-hour layover there shopping, walking through five different gardens, having it our way at Burger King, and bathing in the bathroom sink - much to the surprise of a poor Indian cleaning lady. We felt amazingly cleaner, co it was worth looking silly to the woman. I think the best perk of the entire airport though was the free internet. We all got to update our families and our blogs while we waited.
When we finally boarded our flight to Manila, I was still nauseous and tired. I prayed the entire time we were boarding that I would get to sleep, and God generously answered that prayer. I was blessed with an entire row of seats to myself, and I slept the entire three hours. I woke to the sound of the pilot welcoming us to Manila. After a quick check through customs and immigration, I was reunited with my wonderful team. I can now officially say that I have traveled halfway around the world.)
We stepped off the rental van and into the team’s home for the next two months, Open Door Orphanage. The kids were waiting outside to meet us. We tried REALLY hard to match their excitement, but most of us hadn’t really slept in about 2.5 days, so it was hard. Derek and I met the boys by watching a movie with them. They don’t have much, but they are so creative and generous with what they do have. The movie was on an iPod Touch looped through a shoestring that was hanging from the top bunk of one of the beds. You know in America there would be one kid holding the thing, refusing to give it up, and everyone would have to get at the same angle as that kid if they wanted to see it, or everyone would have their one. All of the children were crowded around the bed watching. This was when it hit home that we were not in America anymore and these children will change the way we see everything.
We crashed into bed, and before instantly drifting off to sleep, we prayed that God would use us to love these children and make an impact on them for the kingdom. We already knew that would have a life-changing impact on us.