Camp Go Missions Trip, July 10-16

After camp, we had a trip to the Philippines. It was amazing. We were there July 10-16. While we were there, we worked with Kids International Mission to help with construction on a new building, helped build houses for 2 families in the community, tutored students at their school in reading English, and did feeding and after school programs. Jobs at the construction site included: carrying bags of rocks and dirt upstairs, carrying the rocks and dirt back downstairs after they realized they needed more downstairs than they had left, bringing rocks and dirt upstairs when another load came in, moving a workout center (weight bench, treadmill, elliptical machine) down 2 stories, painting, moving big bags of food to the food pantry, digging a new walkway then paving it, and more.

Tuesday night, a typhoon hit the area we were staying in. It was supposed to just brush us, but it made a direct hit on us. It was a level 3 typhoon (that’s out of 4 levels). Apparently, it was a bad enough storm that people died from it. I slept through the whole thing. Tree limbs were down, houses in the community were destroyed, power was out, and our plans for the day were changed. We spent Wednesday morning cleaning up KIM from the storm, and sent a group to help rebuild a house in the community that had been damaged by the storm. Wednesday afternoon, we played with the kids from KIM’s orphanage. Thursday, we were mostly back to our normal schedule.

Friday, we got to have a fun day before our flight back to Hong Kong. We went to a water park (which was partially shut down because of damage from the typhoon). Nevertheless, it was a fun time to relax and hang out after a hard week of work. We flew back into Hong Kong on Friday night, and Saturday I had a great time hanging out with the DBU team, but Sunday morning, I had to take them to the airport and send them back to the USA.

The trip was a great chance to develop deeper relationships with the students and get to see some friends from back home. It was also a great reminder to be thankful for the many blessings I have in my life.