Saturday, June 17, 2017

Riverboat Teams: First Days in the Philippines!

Maupay! We are the 2017 Riverboat teams in eastern Samar, Philippines. We arrived in Tacloban City on Thursday June 8, where our translators and our local IMB supervisors greeted us. The teams couldn’t have been happier to have finally arrived in the Philippines and have a warm welcome from our friends (in Waray) after nearly three days of travel. Everyone hugged and greeted each other, then got to know each other better by piling approximately twenty people into a jeepney .

We spent the first two nights in a hotel where we could have air conditioning and a private comfort room for a short time while we adjusted to the environment. Both nights we ate at a local mall. The mall was very nice and very much like an average American indoor mall. Most of the Filipinos in that area knew enough English to have an average conversation, so it was not difficult to pick up supplies.  The first morning we ate a Filipino breakfast at an eatery around the corner from where we were staying. Afterwards our local contacts assigned the teams a scavenger hunt that had to be completed at the street market.  There we found fruits that none of us had seen before, bought malongs, drank coke from a bag, and bought
Coke in a bag!
fans to keep cool. As much as it was an exciting experience, it was an opportunity for us as a team to learn to trust our translators to haggle prices for us and take care of us; otherwise sellers may take advantage of our American ignorance. After resting up and being briefed on our locations we were ready to disembark for our destinations: Hiliba-an, Oras, and Dolores. I hope to provide more updates in the near future. Salamat!

Please be praying for the team’s health, endurance, that the Holy Spirit would be moving in us as well as the people around us, and our translator’s ability to understand and translate specific dialects effectively.

-Sam