Two islands, a prison cab and a girl equal about 17 mosquito bites and one bruised hip.. but all is well that ends well in a four-star restaurant

So, ya know how every once in a while you go to a friend’s house and you have to sleep on the couch, and it’s just not super comfortable, so you sleep like crap and just can’t wait to get back into your own bed?

It’s interesting how that totally goes to the crappers once you’re on the mission field. Actually, to be frank, I think missionaries were born to either a.) sleep well anywhere or b.) learn to not need sleep. If you cannot adapt to one or the other, you end up packin’ it homewards inside of a month. Though actually you can’t just adapt to one—you really do need at least a pinch of both ingredients in order to stew up the strength of longstanding survival. Not to say you need a HUGE dose of both—but at least a smidge.

Aaaall that is to say, this may be why the good Lord saw that, indeed, it was good to divinely appoint me with the gift of Sleeping. Yeah! People usually skip it, but it’s there, right along with a list of speaking in tongues, prophecy, hospitality, sleeping….  So, ya know, I may not be an apostle or anything, but I can out-sleep any missionary I know.

I feel a story coming on. Indeed, a snapshot!

So. This last week Paul, Marcy & I have been travelling around the island of Leyte and its neighbor Samar to meet with pastors and present to them the simple vision and purpose of church planting. The format that the CMC has for church planting is so insanely simple it really boggles my mind, and its work is so genuinely motivated that I feel refreshed every time I listen to the presentation (and seriously, I have heard it like ten gajillion times, and it still reminds me of the goodness behind it).  

Anyway, so it’s kind of a crazy job with really…uhh…intense travel requirements, since we’re mostly trying to reach groups of pastors that are working in the barangays (small towns) out in the countryside. So, ya know, being the less populated areas, they tend to be ever-so-slightly overlooked in the whole “upkeep” work for areas under government responsibility (case in point, roads & transportation), beyond the fact that are very geographically distant from every conceivable place we would be under normal circumstances.

So our week goes a little something like this. Sunday: leave for boat at 5pm. Boat leaves 8pm. Arrive in Leyte 4 am. Continue to sleep on boat until a more reasonable hour (6am). Depart boat, and look for coffee. May the gods be praised, their nectar is discovered and we drink deeply from its juices at a local sidewalk café. Next: acquire passage to meeting point with Pastor Boy, who is going to drive us around everywhere. Passage acquired, and in typical Filipino style, we wait around for 2 more hours until it leaves, making us several hours late for Pastor Boy. Three-hour van ride later, we hope in the back of Pastor Boy’s multi-cab.

Multi-cab (mole-tee-cab: noun, m.): a truck-like device with a large back area made specifically for the Filipino passenger, usually small in stature and unparticular about transportation circumstances. Two benches are usually found running along the sides, and the back area has walls, a roof and a back door, similar to transportation used for prisoners. Generally highly-disfavored by foreigners, particularly large ones.

Five hours or so later, we spritz on some perfume and hop out of the prison car multi-cab and shake hands with the pastors enthusiastically greeting us. Assuming the same posture, we smile, make small talk and groom ourselves for something akin to energy, and get ready for the presentation. Marcy, Paul and Pastor Boy pull this off much better than I at this point, but as each day passes I learn from them and copy their rock-solid example.

The excitement that Filipinos experience in hosting foreigners is beyond anything I can possibly compare. Stretch your imagine to its wildest when imagining how happy they are to see your American face, falling short of nothing except, perhaps, discovering that you are single. Anyway, so the energy it takes to meet theirs when you meet them for the first time is considerable, and there is little to no (more like no) sympathy for the fact that you have been travelling straight for about 15 hours…so if you happen to even seem rude, it really is very offensive and hurtful to them, even if you are exhausted. Knowing this, it really motivates you to be kind & ready for conversation-making, and once my self-pitying mindset was clicked off, everything got easy.

We give them our presentation, eat with them afterwards, and about 3.5 hours later we hop back into the multi-cab to go to our next presentation. However many hours later, we arrive, give the presentation again, leave about 2 hours later (no meal this time) and get back into the multi-cab for the 3 or 4 or 5 hours (you start losing count—you just know that every time you get into that cell you are not leaving for quite some time) that it will take to get us to where we will spend the night.

We arrive at the Bible College and they set us up in the rooms we had stayed in on our last trip to the island, which coincidentally, was in a boys’ dorm room, haha. It’s actually one of the nicest places that we have stayed, and since we have a mattress, running water and our own bathroom, it’s pretty much heaven.  We get a good nights’ sleep, and won’t have to leave until 6 am. The next day is spent much the same, and then we come back to the bible college, getting ready that night for our next day’s trip to the island of Samar.

So we wake up 2:45 am so we can make it in time for the 10am presentation we have planned for that morning. We travel all day, make 3 presentations (that are about 6 hours apart from each other, so at one point the three of us separated to make 2 presentations at once, then meet up again at the last one), and then come to the very important realization that the next place for a presentation is a 15 hour drive away, and is scheduled for the next day. What to do, what to do…. Well, Pastor Boy being the hard-core man of action that he is, he piles us into his multi-cab and drives us through all the live-long night, trading off with one of the other pastors for a bit, but seeing that his companion’s driving sends his sleeping passengers flying up into the air and back down again, takes matters of night-driving back into his own hands, and the other pastor drives during the day.

Sleeping arrangements go a bit like this (see if you detect the Gift I was speaking of earlier): Paul and Marcy share a bench to lay on, which is certainly not long enough for the two of to stretch out, so they sort of half curl-up, half fall off the bench…which, by the way, is probably about 9 inches wide or so, being generous of guess. One of the pastors lies on the other bench (back problems—really should have the whole thing, as it’s not really comfortable even with that), and I find myself on the anything-but-immaculately-clean-and-even floor. The bottom is like any truck bed floor, where the slates alternate between a ridged high and low, except instead of that hard, plastic-y surface, it’s hard metal. Metal metal metal. Doesn’t get more metal kind of metal. So anyway, I curl up on the floor since it has more room, anyway, and on more than one occasion I feel my entire body fly up into the air, hover for a moment like a bad UFO, and land down again with a WHAM that drew the concern of Pastor Boy for my well-being… and resulting in a tender hip the next morning. However, it did not disturb me in the least at the time, as I went right back to sleep, jealously grasping my REM cycle back into position before it slipped away and left me awake and cranky from the meager 3 hours of sleep from the night before.

You see, the jostling was a bit more eccentuated on this venture, as the roads were in truly breathtaking condition. ‘Bad’ cannot possibly wrap its insufficient meaning around the state of it… really, I have no words. And you know that it must be bad if I’m left speechless to describe it. Anyway, so you get the idea. Driving across these roads is ‘bad’. Very bad indeed. Sleeping across them is, perhaps, a feat only for the strong of back and padded of butt.

Now I know why the Lord put extra cushion in my seat. He knew.

Anyway, so we did actually get some sleep, and in the morning found a place to eat where they miraculously, and unusually so, had a place to bathe as well. This means that their CR (bathroom) has a small open area next to the toilet with a spigot, large bucket and a small bucket with a handle. You fill the large bucket, and scoop out the water to pour over yourself with the smaller bucket/cup thingie, and voila! The bathing is done.

Bathed and fed, we get in the cab for another 2 hours or so and make it to our fateful presentation. It goes very well, and we drive back to the Bible school (yes, it still a long drive back) for a good night’s rest in an actual bed. We sleep for a full 8 hours on a real bed (words can’t describe the wonder, the glory, the greatness of it all), and wake up to come home today….and yes, that meant riding a multi-cab, bus, boat and taxi to get here…but somehow, though it sounds so intense, it felt so normal, and so…. could it be? easy! It’s strange, but yes, easy! I’m exhausted, mind you, but not exhausted in mind. And really, there lies most of the obstacle. If you let yourself be tired and strained, then so you will feel. But just accepting things as they are in order to accomplish what you set out to do, well, then it’s just taking it one bit at a time, nothing more.

On our way back from the very last presentation, pastor Boy stopped for our dinner. Happy to at least be stopping for food, but starting to get very sick of just plain rice with some chicken on top, I prayed, “God, could you just make it something different tonight? Anything will do, just… different.” It was my first prayer of the like, and my answer came not in a pizza, hamburger or Chinese barbeque… but in going to perhaps the most beautiful restaurant I have ever seen in my entire life. It was set in the midst of gardens, still waters with water lilies, fountains and gazebos, bushes lit up with fireflies and lines of paths amongst the gardens that are bordered by beautiful lamps and the occasional sitting gazebo….  I literally cannot compare it to any place I have been before, except perhaps the prettiest of the richest, most expensive restaurants I’ve seen in the states… but none of them had the setting of this one.

It sat with open walls, so that you could see everything around you and enjoy the delicious tropical night air. It was decorated with fine artwork,  bordered with woodwork of the famous Filipino carvings that are admired worldwide, and best of all, furnished with the most incredible food EVER.

Yeah, so, all that is to say, it was a really great dining experience.

As a side note, the full dish that covered everything from the main dish to your drink, appetizer and dessert cost about 5 bucks. And it’s like, gourmet food. Yeah. I know. Blows the mind, doesn’t it—especially when you find yourself dropping five bucks at jack-in-the-crack.

So, God is good. The work is good. The travelling is hilariously wonderful, and really an amazing opportunity to see all of the best sites of the country that you normally would never see from any other travelling. It’s harder on the butt, but definitely easy on the eyes. There are beaaaaautiful hillsides, waterfalls, mountains, sunrises, seasides, houses, people, buffalos, rice fields, bridges, streams….its endless. Really incredible, and unforgettable.

Right, so, I’ve gone on and on, and you seriously get three cheers and a few kudos for getting through it (if you really did that is, and didn’t just skip through to the end to see if I had a point. As you can see, I don’t, so don’t you feel silly for just skipping through like that).  

Also, as a side note to explain, I am usually, during these presentations, called upon to do a “special number” where I’ll sing & play guitar, but I also help share information and such, since there is a lot of information to share.  Most importantly though, at least in my opinion, I’ve put in my two cents to coach Marcy & Paul in perfecting their already-good presentation skills, helping to make their presentation a clearer and stronger one. But really my favorite part is sharing my heart with the pastors, and getting the opportunity to share with them the incredible vision this work entails. I can also be the random technology helper by doing the power point slides for the speaker, and writing out slides for new information, explaining logistics to pastors, helping answer questions about the organization, etc etc etc.

So I thank you again for your prayers and all your support, and send my love. As it is now almost 11pm of the very day I have come back telling you this, I am now going to bed. Goodnight, and much love.