Sorry it’s been so long since we’ve written. Hope you weren’t too worried, Mom.

So we’re back in Bagabag even though we’d planned to be in Davao with Scott & Carrie at this point. But due to rain today, we departed Palanan (a tiny village on the northeastern point of Luzon) for Bagabag (leg 1 of 3 of today’s planned journey) five minutes before we were supposed to be departing Manila to Davao (leg 3 of 3). So we uh … missed that flight to Davao. We’re really bummed we won’t get to see Scott and Carrie (or pay homage to our favorite Pinoy town), but at the same time we’re really glad for a few days of R&R here at Bagabag. Basically we’ll lie low over the weekend (on mattresses … without having to worry about rats - ahhh …), and hope the weather clears enough for us to fly to Manila on Monday. Then Tuesday we head from Manila to Singapore, then Wednesday Singapore back home.

More on the past week later … basically it was great. Bontoc is like “Far, Far Away” in Shrek 2 - we expected grass roofs and got Internet cafes (I know, I know - no blog entry. Down with your rotten tomatoes, you web geeks!). But Bugnay was much more rustic - a lot like the village Daniel grew up in actually. We got some good interviews and photos, I got really scared our jeepney was going to fall off the cliff that they were doing construction on, and we saw some great rice terraces that were actually green! (it’s planting season so we’ve been disappointed before this). Then we went out to Palanan yesterday - a fascinating town/village where the lowlanders (picture your average Filipino) have lived right next to the native Agta or negrito (picture aborigines) for centuries, treating the Agta as slaves - pushing them off the land to be nomads in the forest, ostracizing them and teaching their children that the dark-skins are ghosts and witches. But in the last 20 years God has begun to do so much … some of the Agta have come to know Jesus, and now are being radically transformed from the deep culture-wide shame that controlled them for so long - they are now registered citizens with the government, claiming their right to be seen as people; many are going to school; some are beginning to translate the Bible into their own language; and many are even winning lowlanders to Christ! What a role reversal. We got to meet some of them and it’s really incredible what God is doing.

Now though? We’re going to go to bed. On mattresses. Without rats (we hope).