I received a great welcome when I arrived in the
Philippines! I was greeted at the
airport in Tacloban by Sister Aileen and two of the Oikos Scholars studying in
Tacloban, Mariano and Deo. Truly, even
though 6 months have passed, there was not even a moment of awkwardness. With open arms and bright smiles, I was
greeted and welcomed. And it felt great!
The first few days here I spent sleeping mostly! I had been traveling about 38 hours, doing
the airport “hurry up and wait” dance for a few days, eating bad food and
trying, without success, to sleep on the airplanes. I was so grateful to my Tacloban welcoming
committee for putting me up in a hotel for a night so I could sleep! And sleep I did…like a ton of bricks, as my
grandfather is fond of saying.
One fun airplane story (yes, there is such a thing as a fun
airplane story…keep in mind in the past few years I have been on many, many
airplanes and this is my first fun story.
If you haven’t had one yet…keep at it, it’ll come!) Anyways, the night before I left for the
Philippines, I was having dinner with my parents, my grandmother and my sister
Anne and her children Natalie, Penelope and Elijah. Anne asked me if there was anything else I
needed before I left. Quite coyly I said
that since coming back from the Philippines, I haven’t had a double chocolate
caramel Magnum ice cream bar. If you’ve
never had one, GET ONE NOW!!! It is
vanilla bean ice cream wrapped in a layer of chocolate, coated in a layer of
caramel and finished off with a second, decadent layer of chocolate. It is simply amazing…and all of the sudden I
totally wanted one. Another sacrifice,
I thought…not too terrible of one, but, hey a sacrifice is a sacrifice…let’s
not go around weighing them against others!!
So fast forward a few hours and there I am, on a huge airplane in
Detroit soon to leave for the Philippines via Tokyo, and I look at the
in-flight menu. You’ll never guess what
the snack was… well, you probably have guessed it, but I’ll tell you just the
same… a double chocolate caramel Magnum ice cream bar!!!!! I kid you not!!! Am I sad that God has taken away an
opportunity to sacrifice… uh, not even for a teeny tiny millisecond!!! Believe me, there will be ample times of
offering sacrifices over the coming year!
I felt so taken care of…like God was saying to me, I’m proud of you for
taking this step…have a cold one on Me!!!
Well, I don’t really know if God does things like that, but to me, in
that moment, I felt like God got it, He got me, and together we would do really
well over the coming year. That’s a lot
for a double chocolate caramel Magnum ice cream bar to deliver…but it so
totally did! And I so totally enjoyed
it!
