Welcome Abroad

I was sitting on the bus on my way home from Butuan, still sad from leaving and thinking about how leaving people I care about is just really not my specialty. As I gazed out the window looking forlorn, I saw a misspelled sign on the back of a public transportation vehicle called a jeepney. The greeting read “Welcome Abroad.” It seemed to say to me, “Yep, that’s what happens when you travel. You have to say a lot of goodbyes.”

I left Butuan on March 7, and it was a very difficult goodbye for me. I had an adopted family and a good group of friends there. Thankfully, they're really into texting here, so we'll keep in touch that way. I'll especially miss my friend Kuya Jun. He is the youth pastor at their church, 26 years old, and my adopted Filipino brother. He has an American girlfriend (talk about a long distance relationship!) so he really understands all the adjusting and difficulties I'm going through- and his English is pretty much perfect. I’ve also made a lot of friends with the Fortun’s extended family. Anyway, I cried when I left. A bunch of the family met us at the office in the morning for snacks and goodbyes. Ate Mimi, Kuya Jun, and my friends Joyce and Ryan (cousins of the family) accompanied me to the bus.

You'll never believe what I did, those very three friends, plus one other named Pai, got me to eat balut! Balut is a Filipino delicacy which is made of partially developed duck eggs that are boiled. It tastes like chicken soup on top of a hard boiled egg yolk. It would be quite soothing to the stomach if you weren't totally grossed out. The one I had was 18 days developed, so it had a distinct shape, but no feathers or bones yet like it would at 21 days. My friends said, "And at 24 days, it'll bite you!" So that's my story about eating aborted duck.

I had a big long day of Nehemiah Teams orientation today. I learned about some of their goals and strategies first. Then I wrote my testimony in such a way that it would be easy to translate and understand, which was a bit tricky, but a good exercise. Lastly, I learned a simple way to initiate and carry out a home Bible study if I share the gospel or my testimony and someone is interested in learning more. My leader gave me a cool little card the size of a large bookmark spelling out some suggestions of Bible stories to read, how to process them as a group, and then lead into an invitation. Then I practiced. It was hard, but I'm very glad to have that tool. It's so practical!

I'm going to Manila! I was pretty shocked when I recently found out. I would fret that I'm going alone, but then I remember that I came all the way here alone, and I already know my way around the airport. The only thing that's a little bit of a downer is that I will have no use for my Cebuano up there. Oh well, God has a plan. I wouldn't have traded my time in Butuan for anything. My friends from there still keep in touch, often daily.

So here is my updated schedule- I'll have three months to scope out five different orphanages, spending a couple weeks at each, to assess the situations there and give my supervisors the info they need to equip the teams. There will be five teams of four, two in Manila and three in Davao area, with me leading one of the Davao teams. The teams will be here for June and July, so I'll have three months to scope it out and work on my own. After that I’ll spend two months leading the students, and I'll leave at the same time as them.

Since I am their first impression of the American teams, it's very important that I make a good impression on everyone at the orphanages by being a blessing, not a burden. I can do that, but it might be hard to keep up for three months. It looks like I'll have a pretty strenuous schedule, so please pray for strength, endurance, and patience for me.

I had an unexpected extra day before I went to my first orphanage stay, so I spent it volunteering at the closest orphanage in Davao city, named Living Stones. (I’ll be staying at this one later in my trip). There were six babies and six toddlers. I spent about half the day helping with the toddlers and the other half watching the babies, mostly alone because the worker there got some other stuff done while I watched the babies for her. The babies often cry just to be held, and it's so hard to know what to do. Obviously they need to be loved on some, but you can't be their constant slave, especially with such an uneven ratio. In the end, you have to just let them cry it out most of the time once you're pretty sure nothing is wrong. I was exhausted at the end of the day. I almost put salt in my evening tea.

Let me tell you about Love the Children (and I do!) They are a Pentecostal establishment geared toward taking in street kids. There are four different rooms for housing the kids. One is all the girls, one is for the younger boys (ages 6-12), one is for the older boys (13-16), and the last one is for the really troubled boys. These guys have been through a lot and aren’t yet ready to function normally in society. They don’t go to school yet, so their house father watches them all day. I will spend time working in each of the “houses” for four or five days, except for the last one. My day starts at five with a mad rush to get all the kids bathed, dressed, and fed before school. Since almost all of them go to school, I usually have a break between 1:30 and 4 to either rest or run errands. I haven’t really been able to go out yet because they’re so protective of me as a young American woman. Not only am I a foreigner, but I’m still considered a child in this culture. I’m sleeping in a small room with fourteen girls, so it takes a minute or two to get them to quiet down- Ha! I wish. I made a new rule that works nicely for me when the little ones are being unruly. It’s basically a three-strikes-you’re-grounded rule. I’ll hold up one finger when I ask them to do something, and two fingers when I ask them a second time. If I get to three, grounded! I’ve only grounded one so far, but there’s another boy who refuses to obey. Maybe I should try the opposite game! The food here is… better than what most people here are eating! It’s mostly rice with a little bit of something else. The something else is almost always delicious and healthy, but the balance is a little hard for me to get used to. I was excited about having a washing machine here, but after one of my shirts got lost for a week, I’ve chosen to hand wash my stuff anyway.

On my day off this week, I took a boating/swimming/snorkeling excursion with the family I’m working with and some other missionary families. I had so much fun! Mom, I applied AND reapplied sunscreen, promise, but my back still got fried. You know me, I hardly left the water. I had fun diving down for shells and a closer look at things. It was all I could do to not touch everything down there- I look with my hands as much as with my eyes. It was lovely and I now have a nice shell collection to remember it by. However, I’ll probably opt for taking it easy on my next day off.

"Just call me Long for short,"…is what my friend Balong said, and I found the unintended pun hilarious. For nicknames here, they either make your name shorter or they make it really short and say it twice. So my nickname is either Ate Becca or Ate BecBec. It's pretty cute. Oh wait, there's technically no "c" in their alphabet, so it would be Beka or BekBek. And on that note, it’s my bedtime! Love you guys!