The Overnight Mission Flight cont. : The Morning After.

Good Morning from a Palawano Mountain Paradise! Since it was dark when we arrived at the house we weren't able to take pictures of the GORGEOUS view outside. The house was right next to a beautiful, clear river and right on the other side of the river was a mountain. It was amazing! Also their yard was like the Garden of Eden complete with Palm trees, 2 huge gardens FULL of fruits and vegetables (they even had Pineapple plants and Mango trees!) AND, get this, REAL GRASS! We have not seen a lawn in such a long time. It took every bit of our self-restraint to not lay on it and star gaze. We had not seen such a beautiful landscape in SUCH a long time. It was awesome!

We were woken up at 5am to head back to the helicopter. Its not everyday you wake up to a man with a heavy Ukrainian accent (that being, Andrey) saying, "Girls! If you do not hurry up, we will leave you here!" lol. So we got up and helped collect all our bedding and mosquito nets. Then we said Goodbye to Lola and Lolo and headed back through the elements to the helicopter. 

One reason it was so important for us to leave early in the morning (besides good weather) was that we were suppose to be flying out to Manila the following morning and we were riding in the truck with Andrew and Michel to Puerto that morning.

Allison: Wait, so let me get this straight. We had to wake up early to take a helicopter, to catch a truck, to catch an airplane?

Sam: Yeah. Pretty Much.

When we reached the helicopter, Andrey checked the sky and the wind speed and told us we were good to go. So we, once again, packed up the medical supplies. Then Sam and Andrey flew out. 

We've been here a couple months now and we've seen the helicopter take off and land a couple times. However, Allison has established this fear that while she films the helicopter something is going to go wrong (a giant gust of wind or the pilot not aware that she is nearby) and somehow the helicopter blade will chop her head off, like in the movies. So anytime she films the helicopter she ALWAYS either moves or runs away. This time, though, she decided she was going to face her fear and was going to stay in place. Here is the video of us flying back:

(the first take off was from the night before when Andrey and Sam attempted to fly out)

As you can see, Allison employed the help of Jam to keep her from running away in terror.

Our Palawano Mountain Paradise from the air!

As Andrey and Sam arrived back at the project they were met with tear-stained faces of relief and a few "Praise the Lords". Apparently the text we had sent out the night before did not go through so all the other Missionaries (and most importantly Andrey's wife, Tanya) knew was that we flew out with the intention of coming back that night and we never did. They began to panic as the night went on and had called everyone they knew to see if they had heard from us. Wendy and Dwayne, The president of the PFM group, The Georges in Kemantian, all with no results. Needless to say it was a LONG night for the project (which is sad, seeing as to how we spent the night comfortably in a Palawano Paradise no less.). After things settled down a little bit, Andrey returned and got Jam and Allison.

The people all gather around to laugh at Jam as he gets strapped into the patients bed. lol.

When Allison and Jam landed, the 3 of us headed to the apartments to get ready to leave for Puerto. As we drove we just prayed that Wendy didn't contact our parents while everyone was freaking out. It had been hard enough for our parents to deal with our Grandma's sudden death and funeral, that finding out their children were missing would be a definite recipe for disaster. Right when we got home we Skyped our parents, thankfully they were totally oblivious to the whole thing. Crisis diverted!
We quickly showered and packed a bag, then headed to Puerto. We had SOO much fun on our first medical mission and our surprise overnight stay. We hope to do many more in the future (Preferably without scaring everyone else) Till next time...

~Me and Her