Coconuts and Pineapples (:

So today was pretty much the most amazing day ever! I don’t even know how to describe the feeling I have after the day is over, so I’ll try to explain :)

One of my biggest dreams was realized today. *Drumroll* I drank out of a real coconut. I know you were expecting something huge and monumental, and you’re probably really disappointed right now, but it was really one of the most exciting things EVER! We had to walk about a mile into the woods to get to one of the schools today, and when we got there and after I spoke, the teacher asked if we wanted coconut juice. I said yes, figuring it was the kind you can get in cans at the restaurants here. I was shocked when the teacher picked up a bamboo pole and walked to the nearest tree. She stabbed up with the bamboo pole and three coconuts fell down. (It was exactly something like you’d see on Survivor :D ) She got the principal to get the machete, and he just whacked the coconut with the machete and handed it to me. I was pleasantly surprised that the milk from it was really good. I was just so thrilled and like a little kid at getting to drink out of a coconut! I have pictures, but I don’t have them on my computer yet.

After that school, we visited a school that was right next to a pineapple field. For a snack, they offered us fresh pineapple! I’m officially spoiled now and I can never eat a pineapple from America again. EVER. This thing was so amazing. But I’ll stop making you drool now and move on to more serious things :)

One of the schools I visited, the principal came up to me before I spoke. He asked me what the real reason for us coming here was. I explained to him that we came to share the gospel with people, and he shook his head at me, disagreeing. He said “You must have come for reasons other than to share those few words.” I said that to us they were very important words, and they needed to be shared. I had to go on to speak then, so I left him with that thought. After I spoke, he came up to me, and he had tears in his eyes. He looked at me and said “What you said about Jesus dying on the cross so we can have eternal life, I believe that.” I have never been so amazed at someone’s transformation as I was then. He was one of the hardest principals I had visited so far, because he was just so reluctant to let us speak, and once he heard it, just like that he believed it.

We were in the van on the way home, and the song “The Word Is Alive” by Casting Crowns came on the radio and it just really made me think. If we were in America, we wouldn’t even be allowed to speak in the schools let alone get any response. The “picking is ripe” here, people are just hungry for the gospel. I’m so excited to be here and see it with my own eyes.

I shared at about 14 schools altogether today, and I am now completely exhausted. It’s a really good kind of tired though…the kind that you feel after knowing you’ve done something really important that’s going to make a huge difference. I feel so privileged that I am getting to experience this, and still somewhat in shock. I look out at the rice paddies and the sunrise in the mornings as we leave, and it just doesn’t hit me that I’m really in the Philippines. Thanks for everything, I miss you all!

Hannah