I, Crystelle, am sitting here under the cool air of the ceiling fan at the SEND Guest House in the middle of Manila, in the middle of the Philippines! I can hear tagalog chatter coming from the nearby kitchen and the sound of Dustin's breathing as he's napping on the couch next to me. Decia is on the internet computer a few feet away, Jen is in her room upstairs doing accounting stuff, and I can hear occasional voices of the rest of the team who are playing poker on the balcony above us.
We have arrived quite safe and sound to our destination of the Philippines! Our journey was almost unusually uneventful (except for the fact that we misunderstood our departure time from our first flight leaving Calgary, and missed our plane - PTL we were able to board two hours later without any penalty charges and without missing our connecting flight in Vancouver)! The plane rides were fun - lots of "great" airplane food (seaweed soup and soy tofu anyone?), individual touch screen tv's to spoil us, and an 11 hour flight from Vancouver to Seoul to remind us that traveling can lose its novelty. God was gracious in that we had short layovers, flights on schedule, and no trouble getting our luggage once we reached Manila! He is good!
Manila is wonderful! As we left the Manila terminal to find our hosts, the city air hit me with delightful force! It smelled of smog, exhaust, food, and felt of humidity. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. The sound of honking horns, busy traffic and officer whistles reached my ears first. Looking around, I saw beautiful brown faces and dark hair - it is wonderful to be the minority again! I have been pleasantly surprised how much Manila reminds me of Delhi, India! It's super cool! We found our hosts straight away and they brought us to their vans and loaded us up. It was kind of neat to arrive here at night - the city has a totally different night life than during the day, and you get to take in all the lit up billboards and business advertisements of the city. The entire team is staying at the SEND guest house, which was about an hour's drive from the airport. So far, our hosts have been wonderful to us! We were brought to our room's and slept quite comfortably with fans and A/C. Lol - during the middle of the night, us girls had to actually turn our A/C off because we were shivering under our thin sheets. :)
Today has been a relaxed day of orientation to the Philippines and to our ministry with Alex Marcos (a Filipino man who has been hosting short term teams with SEND for 5 plus years), lunch at Grill Queen (yeah for delicious Chicken BBQ, rice, and spicy papaya sauce), a visit to a really nice Starbucks which soon found me with a Mango Passion Fruit smoothie in hand, and then a stop at the local grocery mart, where I purchased cheap flip flops, Colgate toothpaste, mango juice, hand lotion, and tic tacs - all for 264 pasos (which would equal to about $6 Canadian). We are having supper here at the SEND guest house in about half an hour, and then we will hang out here as a team tonight - do some worship, team time, drama practice, etc. I am so proud and fond of the team - they are embracing life here so much and are quite enthusiastic about ministry and loving on the people we come in contact with. I have a real sense that God is going to work in mighty ways through us. Your prayers for focus, a sincere heart for ministry, and discernment among the leadership team would be appreciated!
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