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
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!
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| Coke in a bag! |
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
-Sam