A Walk On The Sun

Last Wednesday I was informed that someone we've worked with here was making a trip out to Dinagat for a quick visit to look at some options for our upcoming summer team and talk with our connection out there about the work.
Quick questions were asked quickly:
"When are you going?"
"Tomorrow, we going to stay in the port city before heading out"
To Hollie, "What do you think about me taking Sophia?"
"Don't you think it would be good for her?"
"Why can't we all go together?"
To Sophia, "Would you like to go tomorrow?"
"Why can't we all go together?"
"Can Aaryn come with us?"
"Do we even have enough money for this trip?"
You get the point.
We decided that Sophia would go with me, so we quickly packed a bag for her and with a lot of questions (and worries) on our minds, we went to sleep so that right after language class we could book it to the bus terminal.
We made it to Surigao a few hours later and after resting in our hotel room for a bit Sophia and I went out to get some pizza at a well worn spot to SRC teams.
That next morning after breakfast Sophia got to board her very first ferry for her very first boat ride out to Dinagat.
She had some snacks, took a nap, walked around outside seeing the water and smaller islands before we made it to Tubajon. We unloaded our bags and went right away to looking at the housing options we had before us for our team this summer. After a good bit of walking and looking we went back to where we were staying and had dinner.
Since Sophia is a puting babae (white girl) she drew a crowd of other kids quick. Anybody who knows Sophia knows that she is extremely social. So when a huge group of kids are around basically just to see her, she is lit up and going. She pulls out her books to share with everyone, tries to play Go Fish with a few of them, all the while conscious that she doesn't have enough to share with everyone. It was really awesome to see how she wanted to interact with the kids, even with some shyness and hesitation because of the language barrier.
Right before dinner we were told that we would be having a cottage prayer and that I, the illustrious and wise missionary (funny right?) would be giving the devotional. Panicking I did what most people try to do in that situation: just use what God has been teaching them recently from their devotional time. So real quick devotional was written off of Romans 3 and then dinner and then boom! off to the cottage prayer meeting. It was a good time for Sophia to see a tiny bit of village worship, in a small house, with people who spoke almost no English. She fell asleep at least once during the prayer!
Good times.
The next day was the big day. Dagat nga adlaw. Beach day. We got ready and I made sure that she brought her hat, water and that I had the little tube of sunscreen for her.
We got onto a large fishing boat and traveled about an hour to a rocky beach. While the other adults were snorkeling I was hanging out with Sophia and two village kids that came with us.
Never in my life have I seen that little girl have so much fun! She was jumping and yelling at the crabs and climbing rocks and looking for new pet snails.
We splashed around for about an hour before getting back on the boat to go to another beach for lunch. I noticed that she was a little sunburned from the morning so I reapplied sunscreen and then we had lunch and played in the ocean for about another two hours or so.
I noticed that she was starting to turn pink, then red, so I had her come out of the sun and try to rest. She did for a bit but was back out in the water not long after sitting down.

After I finally got her to sit down for a good bit of time, Pastor Arnel had gone spearfishing and caught a clown fish, which every Filipino calls nimo (ha!) and showed it to Sophia. She was thrilled to be seeing and handling wildlife and demanded that her new fish be put into a bowl so it wouldn't die (even though it had a hole sticking straight through it) and asked for Arnel to capture some friends for the fish. So he speared two more clown fish to be friends that would sadly, all die together. She was able to take the fish back to where we were staying and while I was helping her to get her stuff ready to change her clothes I noticed that her sunburn was really deep red and that man, she was not going to be comfortable, so I made sure that she was in just an undershirt and shorts while hanging out. 

As the fish finally started to die from their wounds some of the kids went back to the ocean and caught other friends for Sophia. She got to see a baby sea turtle (that's right, a flippin' BABY SEA TURTLE!!) and a seahorse. She wisely had the kids put them back into the ocean. 

I needed to walk to a tindahan (small storefront) put some money on my phone and I wanted her to go with me, and as soon as we started walking then she started talking about how she felt nauseas and turned pale, all the red draining from her face. 

She sat down on the side of the street saying that she needed to sit down and then just bent over and threw up everywhere. I quickly took her back to where we were staying and had her drink some water and lay down, finally able to get all the kids out of there so that she could rest. And rest she did, she slept from that moment (about 4.30 or so) until 6 that next morning. As I sat there with her I went back over the day and realized that every time I had asked her to take a drink of water is was a quick sip and she was back into the sun. The sun. That big ball of burning gas, which gets closer to the earth the closer one gets to the equator. The equator, basically where she played in the ocean. The ocean, one giant mirror, reflecting the burning rays of the giant burning ball of gas. All of that, mixed with her playing for hours on end with little rest and very little water meant that she dehydrated herself and (unknown fully to me then) got one of the worst sunburns I have ever seen. She was weak and tired when she finally woke up the next morning. Knowing she was dehydrated I made her drink water, not too fast, not too slow, to try to replace the fluids she lost the previous day.

Then it was about time for us to go back and get on the boat back home. Unfortunately, we had to go to another village, Tubajon doesn't run ferry service on Sundays. Which meant that we were taking a motorcycle. So, with no helmets, we mounted the iron horse and rode the thirty minutes or so to the next village where we were able to get on the ferry an hour before it left port. 

She seriously slept three and a half hours getting back to Surigao. Then once on the bus, she slept more. All the while horrible blisters were forming under her clothes, and her second degree burn on her shoulders worsened. When we finally made it home, she had blisters on her face that had burst, three huge ones on her shoulders and probably 75-100 little ones spread out on her shoulders and back. 

Her shirt had to get cut off of her, no way of getting that off without ripping and tearing skin. When all of what happened to our little girl was visible to us both, anger and tears and shame started. 

Hollie and Ate Mimi took her to the doctor where she got a prescription for antihistamine, burn ointment, and an antibiotic to help with itching, the burn and squash any infection. Her shoulders still look bad, really bad. But in just one day of wearing the medication and gauze we can see how her small body is healing.*

With all the pain that she is in, with the very visible suffering that she is going through and the circumstances around it, we started to doubt, started to question. The Philippines is not America guys. Its not a different part of America that's further south and out in the ocean like Hawaii. In many ways I felt just how different the Philippines is from America over the weekend. I felt hindered by local transportation, local medicine, local thoughts on sunburn (a lot of villagers acted as if it was something they rarely saw for some reason), and over all, the language barrier that kept me from being able to try to help her, to express frustrations to certain people, to communicate basic needs adequately.

What were we doing here? Why did this happen? Why did I even make that stupid trip out there to Tubajon? If this amount of damage can be done in one day, should we be here, risking the safety of our kids? Is this, what we are doing or attempting to do, something that the wellbeing of our kids is worth jeopardizing? Honestly, they didn't even sign up to go with us! They had no say in us packing up everything and leaving their friends and their family to move to a place that is hot and uncomfortable, to have their little lives turned upside down! And for what exactly? What were we doing here that made all of this so important that even though it sucks and is painful to watch our daughter go through this, knowing that it is partly my fault, for not putting adequate sunscreen on her, to even moving here in the first place? 

The Gospel. 

It's just that simple.

Being able to see the Gospel shine forth in the darkest part of the Philippines, to see people's eternal destiny secured in God's Hand, to see the Gospel of grace and forgiveness pour out from strengthened local churches to areas where they have literally never heard that it is by faith alone, through grace alone, for the sake of Christ alone that we can even be saved. That is why we are here. So we take that risk. We put everything that we have, including our children, into the Hands of God and say "I know that only you can keep all this safe, you take it!" 

So right now sucks. Right now we can't even hug Sophia without fear of ripping skin off of her body. We have to watch as the girl who normally is so active just sit there, calmly, watching the t.v. not even trying to be....Sophia! 

So please pray for us, pray that Sophia's body would heal quickly so she can get back to being herself again. Pray also for strength for Hollie and I as we face the devil and his schemes as we press in to the work that we are called to do. Pray for our marriage, because we can feel the strain of living here and working here, and we want your support in that, we earnestly desire that. But also pray for those Filipinos we will be working with more intently over the next few years, pray that hearts are softened and the churches are strengthened and the Gospel is preached and that we will find our proper place within God's work here in the Philippines.

*That was at the first time of writing this, almost a full week ago now. Her skin is devoid of any blister and she has mostly finished peeling. She has quite a bit of bright red new skin that we have dubbed her dragon skin, which will probably peel too. Her energy and same crazy-outgoing-driving you-up-the-wall personality is back full swing. Thank you all so much for your continued prayers!