Well and truly arrived

We journeyed with basically no hiccups. The flight to Manila took not much more than five hours. Barely any of us got more than a 15 minute snooze in that time.

Our passage through immigration and customs was easy and we arrived at the domestic airport at around 4.30 am. We were left with about 3 hours to have a bite to eat and wander around. A couple of our members snoozed for a while.

The flight to Naga took less than an hour and we were heading to the monastery by 9.30am.

Then we hit the traffic. Today is the big feast day for the region. Cars are everywhere. A 15 minute trip took us close to an hour. Mind you, the kids were fascinated by every sight and could not believe the ways in which every road rule was ignored.

The brothers welcomed us with their usual joy. After some us had a quick 2 minute shower and change, we headed down to the Apostolate, the brothers' care facility, for a quick welcome and orientation. Again we were welcomed with great joy by all of the residents. We introduced ourselves and then moved among the young and old. The team members seemed naturals at such an out of the comfort zone experience.

A lot of work has been done on the children's section. It is very child friendly and the brothers have built a classroom for the special needs kids.

We then visited the women's section which has bent mostly emptied in anticipation of our arrival. Starting Monday, we will be painting this section, as we did for the children 4 years ago.

After this visit, we were taken out to lunch. We were fed very, very well. But, the traffic.... It is growing by the hour.

Even though I had explained to the brothers that we are desperately in need of rest, having been awake for almost all of 36 hours, we are now expected to head to the big festival in the centre. I don't think that anyone is looking forward to it - we need sleep.

That's all for now.

Rob has lots of great photos to share later.

God bless

Fr D