Our Little Troopers

This past wk has been NUTS. So full of adventures that I don't even know where to start. I took more than 1,000 pics, and since I obviously can't share all of them with you (deep sigh of relief from you), I picked through them and will do a couple different posts about our time. This post will focus on our little troopers.

We spent 4 days traveling all over our little peninsula and visted about a dozen different villages. We spent many hours in the car on rough roads and even more on the trail, hiking over steep mountains and crossing rivers. The kids were with us every step of the way, and we are so proud of the way they toughed it out. (you will notice another "whitey" in the pics - that is Melissa, the teenage volunteer who is with us this month - she did great too :) )

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some of the climbs seemed that they would go on forever

When we would arrive in a village, the group we were with would put on a little program and share their testimonies (more about that in another post). The kids did a great job of staying quiet and not distracting the group (easier said than done since everyone would rather watch the white kids than listen to what is being shared).
Anyone wonder what Zach is doing in the above pic? Here is a close-up of them. They have a spider in that little box. Every little boy's favorite toy - a spider on a stick. :)
Something they like to do in the village is gather the left-over abaca fibers that are scattered around (long stringy things that have been stripped out of a plant; the people use them to weave hammocks, ropes, etc). They then sort the fibers and tie the ends together to make a long string. Not sure what the plan is for the long string, but it keeps them occupied for hours on end.

We got to see some amazing scenery as we hiked through the mountains of our beautiful peninsula.

Ben and this little guy played with this itty bitty plastic gun in one village. It was rigged with a little rubber band so that if you put a tiny dirt clod in it, you could shoot it a few feet.

They also did a great job making friends. Here Mikayla is sporting the "frame me" gesture Filipino kids use all the time when posing for a picture.

Another favorite activity in the village is making "stew". They go off and gather random plants and grasses and pound it together to make dinner. Thankfully they are big enough now that we don't have to worry about them trying to eat their creation...I think.

There was a basketball tourney going on near the village where we spent the night, and the kids had fun watching the action. Except for Ben - I discovered that he takes after me and really doesn't like the volume level inherent to community bball games.

This is the bathroom at the village where we stayed. It was just a hole in the ground, but it was better than the facilities at the vast majority of places we visited - most places you just had to try to find a private place behind a tree. Again, tricky to do when everyone just wants to watch what the white kids are doing.

What a beautiful morning! We had to get up before the sun then start hiking as it rose, but we were greeted with views like this so it was worth it.

heading down to the boat to go back across the lake and on to another village

the kids have become great little hikers, but they also get a lot of practice with boat travel as one of our areas is only accessible by small boat

Mikayla carrying our sleeping mat and walking through the market to where we parked the car. From there we drove to another area to hike to a different village.

We spend a lot of time walking through rice fields in between trails. Ben actually spends a lot of time falling into rice fields while the rest of us walk on the terrace walls. A rice field is actually a very safe place to fall - it makes for a very soft, albeit incredibly muddy, landing.

We crossed this long swinging bridge at one point. Since we had a large group, it really got swinging there for a while, and poor Ben (who doesn't have the world's best sense of balance) got pretty freaked out. Fair enough since the holes were big enough that he could have easily fallen through. I kept a firm grip on the back of his shirt the whole way.

So proud of these kids - Melissa too!

One of the houses where we stopped along the trail had a couple monkeys in a cage that provided a lot of entertainment.

many hours on the trail

Ben actually walked most of it, but he did get carried off and on - usually after stubbing a toe or skinning a knee.

Both Zach and Ben fell sound asleep in one village during the meeting. They really needed the rest. I put the 2 bags on his legs to try to keep the flies off. Check out those filthy feet!!!

This trail included a trek through a dam run-off. Thankfully it wasn't deep, and it cleaned our feet a little. 'Course, I am not guessing the water was all that sanitary...

climbing out the other side of the dam over-flow area

taking a break from hiking to enjoy the beauty of God's creation

One day we drove around to the other side of the peninsula to visit a village over there and enjoyed some amazing views along the way. This is the group of tribal people we were traveling with - more on them in a post to come.

We ate some interesting food, but the kids did great with no complaining at all. The rice is always their favorite. The whitish vegetable is part of the trunk of a coconut tree (bet you didn't know part of it is edible!) cooked in coconut milk - actually quite good. The dark vegetable is a dried leaf cooked in coconut milk, spicy peppers, tiny whole fish, and coconut milk. The fish are served with the heads still attached so as not to miss the delicacy of the fish eyes.

They did great eating whatever was served to them. I guess anything tastes good after that many hours on the trail!

We were all excited when it worked out to stop by the ocean on the way home that day. Amazing what a few mins of playing in the surf can do. BTW, that is not mud on the beach; it is a black-sand beach, very common on our peninsula (because of the many volcanoes?).

Mikayla absolutely loves it when one of the babies will come to her. Usually they are too scared since they haven't seen white people before, but she is in her element when they will.

I love this one of Ben listening to group sharing time.

They got to play down by the river for a while in one village. Zach was teaching Ben how to skip rocks. What a good big brother!

Wow, just looking at pics from this day makes me tired. It was a ROUGH hike. There was no trail (it is a new village we are just starting out in, and we tried a new way to get there....didn't go so well). It was incredibly steep - both up and down, and we had to cross several mountains to get there - not to mention leech-infested streams and ankle-deep mud. It was an "either laugh or cry" kind of day so we did a lot of giggling while we slid down the mountain slopes. Ok, so the girls did a lot of giggling, and the guys just smirked at us.

Look how far Steve is bending over to try to lower Ben to where he can safely drop him. I couldn't get pics in the most treacherous spots because...well, because I was just trying to not fall OFF the trail and help the kids to do the same.

Ben got bit by a nasty fire ant. :( Poor kid, those things really hurt, worse than a wasp or a bee. Thankfully he didn't have a serious reaction to it, and he did get carried for a while by one of the tribal guys who took pity on him. I was actually a little envious of Ben on that climb...but since even little Ben weighs nearly as much as the tribal guys, I am afraid I am on my own. It was actually just at the crest of this mountain that we lost the kids for a while. We were breaking trail through the forest, and they had gotten separated from us with another group. We knew they were with people, but it was unnerving not knowing exactly where they were for about 30 mins til we met up with them at the bottom.

finally arrived!!! we were all pretty beat to say the least, but we made it!

We are so thankful for our precious children, and we know that God is doing great things in and through their little lives as they serve Him here in the villages of the Philippines.