Pagsanjan Falls

A wonderful group of volunteers lovingly gave of their $ and time to come and help take care of all our kids at the conference we attended in Cebu. They were an amazing group, and we praise God for their willing sacrifice. 3 of those volunteers are with us now for a week. Randy and Rhonda Nelson are from our church in Missouri, and Janice Hansen is a new friend from a church in Kansas that prays faithfully for us. We have been having a great time with them. One day we took a trip to some waterfalls we have never been to before. We loaded up in 2 small canoes (the boys didn't come with on this trip, just Mikayla). At first the river was pretty wide, but it quickly got narrower.

Mikayla rode with the Nelsons, and Janice rode with Steve and I.The "boatmen" had to work VERY hard to pull our boats up the river as it narrowed into a stream. There were 18 sets of rapids that they had to pull the canoes up. Steve and I got some great language practice in talking with our boatmen along the way (when they weren't huffing and puffing too hard from the effort of pulling us up the rapids).
The gorge we were in felt like something out of a movie with small waterfalls splashing down the sides and lots of wildlife along the shore (some unique ones we saw were monkeys, snakes, and iguanas).
This one below is a picture of Pagsanjan (pag-san-HAN) Falls at the top of the river. Here we were able to climb onto bamboo rafts and go up behind the falls to a small cave. We even got to try to swim into the base of the falls. It was unreal how strong the current and spray was though.We all got very wet - whether or not you got off and swam at the base of the falls - from the spray and waves from the falls.
Here is a pic of our group in front of the falls. Sorry it is a little blury - the Filipino guy taking the pic must have moved a little bit.
Going back down the river was also an adventure. It was unreal how well they navigated those tiny little boats around all those rocks at top speed. It was like one big water slide.

The trip took about 2 hours altogether, and it was the adventure of a life time. We all had an absolute blast. It was about the prettiest place we have ever been. We were in absolute awe of the beauty of God's creation.