Philippines, part one

Bilbo never wanted to leave the comfort of his home, under the hill in Hobbiton, and travel to a faraway destination. He was quite content living at Bag-end with his usual routine of morning tea with biscuits at nine, second breakfast at ten and lunch promptly at noon. Nevertheless, Bilbo gathered up a few belongings, stuffing them into his backpack and set out on a long, lonely adventure.  He left the security of the shire, wandering out into the wilderness of Middle Earth to find Smaug, a fire breathing dragon, and to reclaim a mountain fortress once belonging to the Dwarves.

Can you relate to how Bilbo must have felt as he left the comfort of his home? Who wants to leave familiar surroundings, family and friends to travel to a faraway place? I left March 17^th, as part of a team from a local humanitarian group, to help rebuild a church and a home that was completely blown down in last November’s typhoon “Yolanda” in the Philippines.

After checking my schedule and asking my family if they would let me go, I boarded a plane in Los Angeles and flew sixteen hours to South Korea. We crossed the date line which completely sabotaged my internal clock but didn’t fool my smart phone at all, as Siri didn’t skip a beat.  After a two hour layover, we boarded another plane bound for Cebu Island in the Philippines. The plane blew out one of it’s front tires during takeoff ,making for a lopsided landing in Cebu.

Upon arrival, we met our guides and drove to the very north end of Cebu Island. The three and a half hour drive could have been compared to the truck chase scene in the Indiana Jones movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, where at least half of our drive was traveling in the wrong lane passing trucks, cars and motorcycles.

We arrived in San Remigio and were quickly introduced to a lovely group of people displaced by typhoon “Yolanda”. Their church building, located in a small village, was completely blown down in the strong winds of one of the country’s worst typhoons. Our team was anxious to get started rebuilding.

When we arrived at the building site we were shocked to find that there were very few building materials on site. One sixty-three year old man, with an old shovel and homemade digging bar, slowly chipped away at the hard soil for the building’s footings.  There were a couple of others trying to dig footings but there were not enough tools to go around. Many of the workers had to resort to sharing the digging bars and used coconut shells to remove the soil from the footings. There were also two carpenters working on a small house for the pastor, his wife and three children. The home’s footprint was twelve feet by twelve feet square and built off the ground on stilts.  

We worked very hard, side by side with these local people, and gained both their respect and admiration. The three by three by three foot deep foundation holes, ten in all, were extremely hard digging. The building’s foundation took seven of us three days by hand, gaining only an inch or two at a time. After working all day in the hot, humid air, we walked several miles back to the house where we were staying. Along the way we noticed trees of all kinds blown completely over, exposing their large root balls. Coconut trees were snapped in half and there was plenty of debris still needing to be cleared away.

One boy, who was an eye witness of the devastation on Leyte Island, said the rain from the typhoon looked like smoke blowing sideways. Another man said that the death toll was around eight thousand with another three thousand unaccounted for.  The chief of the Island of Leyte said it took four months to get the power poles and transmission lines back up and the power back on line. For two days after the typhoon, they were completely isolated from the world and had to go by boat to use their cell phones for communication. Entire families were lost as the storm surge was quite large on the east facing shores. Most villages were very isolated and either did not get sufficient warning or unfortunately ignored them.

One man told a story of how his father was spared when all his neighbors perished in the storm surge. His father clung to iron plumbing pipes in the shadow of a block bathroom wall as the winds ripped roofs and even complete houses from their foundations. As the eighty-six year old man held on to the pipes, two cobras also sought refuge directly in front of him.

Dean will be continued his story next week. If you would like to help… goministries.org