Nehemiah and MUD

Mud. Brown, oozing, slippery, viscous mud. It’s a part of our life here at camp. It gets in your tent, onto your backpack, and all over your clothes. It sticks to everything including your shoes (no point wearing socks), and sandals. Because of this, few people wear shoes and the preferred footwear is flip-flops. As a result, our feet are embedded with mud, and the back of our legs are splattered with it. You just can’t get it all off! But I try, so I keep a bucket in my tent partially filled with water so I can clean off as much mud as I can when I crawl in at night.

And more mud is being created every day! Because it rains every day!! In fact, it’s raining right now and has been most of the day. I won’t bore you with what it’s like to navigate your way to the toilets through the mud pit-plank challenge in the middle of the night, guided by the narrow beam of your headlamp if/when nature calls at an inconvenient time. Ask your daughter about it when she gets home, and you’ll enjoy hearing about it. Personally, I’ve noticed that walking on wet, slippery, skinny planks has increased my balancing skills.

It’s Saturday night and we are a day away from moving to our first ministry location. It was a good day. We all bundled into vehicles and drove 20 minutes to the beach on the West Philippine Sea. Who knew? I mean, we pulled in late last Saturday in the dark and we’ve been here since. All we can see is a ring of jungle-covered hills surrounding us. We had no idea the ocean was so close.

We all played volleyball, swam, and jumped around in the waves. It was amazing. The release that came with the play was needed and all of us, Filipinos included, found friendship in new ways. We have been here, all together sharing in the camp, preparing for our different ministries, and this was a time when we could relax and bond together. It was pretty cool to see it unfold. The beach was gorgeous and the water was like a warm bath…which was nice once it started raining because it was much more comfortable in the water than out!

Sunday supplement: This is our last day at camp. The Backpack team has started pulling down their tents, and the Thailand team has begun cleaning their rooms. They both pack up and leave tomorrow at 4:00 am.  We don’t have to leave until 10:00 am and so we won’t drop our tents until tomorrow. Hopefully, it won’t be raining but the tents will be soaking wet even without the rain.

Yesterday’s opportunity to get out of camp and play was a welcome change. The team is doing really well, but they are ready to begin ministry! We spent a chunk of time packing up our supplies and equipment and the girls have been working hard all afternoon putting together the little details of the VBS program; making sure the crafts are ready, preparing their lessons, and writing out big song sheets.

Tomorrow – It’s a four-hour drive north by truck, with an additional 2-hour boat ride to our final destination. It’s a tiny village, and we will be living in the church and hosting a 4-day (Tues-Fri) VBS program in the mornings, and traveling to even smaller outlying islands to do street (dirt) evangelism and door-to-door work.  Each island has around 35 families on it.

Saturday will be a day off, and on Sunday we will be part of the church service. Afterward, we’ll pack up and take a boat to our next ministry location in the Luminancong area for the next 11 days before returning here for a rest before heading to Taiwan.

I have been told that there is no internet on the islands, and there is a strong possibility that cell phone service will be limited - if it’s even available. That means that tomorrow we may be going into a communication black hole. This was a regular occurrence on a mission team years ago, but rarely happens today – which shows how remote we will be. This means that we won’t be posting any updates or pics during that time.  However, I will do my best to find a way to communicate while we are there!

But let me leave you with this – no news is good news. If you don’t hear anything from us please don’t worry. If the team runs into a problem, or a student has a significant health issue, leadership will travel to a location where we can contact you.

For The Nehemiah Team

Tom