November 9, 2009 – Monday 1:41am (Philippine Time) – Manila,PHILIPPINES – Report submitted by Joe Hurston (Air Mobile Joe)

People often ask me, how do you make the connections, where do you stay, how will you get around / what will your team eat? The list goes on and on. In this report, I would like to tell you remarkable connections and how clean water is getting into the Philippines following what some say is the worst flooding in nearly 100 years (that goes back to nearly 2 life-times!!). As I write this blog, it is nearly 2:00am Manila time, Monday morning. Well, there is a 13 hour time difference between Titusville, Florida (where my family and I live) and Manila Philippines. Ever hear of “Jet Lag”? When we change time-zones, our internal clocks go a little crazy. For me, my body really thinks it is 12:50pm Sunday afternoon. That’s why I’m writing this blog in the wee hours of Monday morning. So, in addition to traveling half way around the world to meet people we have never met in person and work in a country that we have never visited and help people we really don’t know; the “jet lag” adds to the natural turmoil going on. Add to that, “the disaster” of recent massive flooding, infra-structure that is strained beyond belief, people completely wiped out and you wonder “what do we do next, where do we go, Lord, have you really lead us here”? With that introduction, here is how we came here and how we have come to meet some remarkable people and how we are going to help many get clean water. It all began with a lot of prayer. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, when the rains began to fall and the fierce winds began to blow on the Philippines, we knew, at Air Mobile Ministries, that we had to go. We asked the Lord to make a way! PRAYER is really important. Thus began a series of Newspaper and TV interviews. On one such interview several weeks ago, with my good friend an NBC Reporter (WESH Channel 2 – Orlando), Dan Billow, I told him that we were raising money to go. We had already sent 2 Voyagers to the Philippines via Sister Mary Cabrini. We were looking for funding for 8-10 more units so that we could launch an Air Mobile Team and go and see first hand what has happened and how we can help in both a short-term and long term manner. One never knows who is watching TV. In our case, Amy, a hospital administrator living in Orlando, born in the Philippines and currently working on her Master’s Degree at UCF caught the 30 second news cast. Her family in the Philippines had been telling her how terrible things were and getting worse by the day. She wanted to do something to help! When she saw the newscast, she told her husband, “I know that man, he recently spoke with our Hospital Administrative staff regarding his work and the remarkable Voyager water machine. I must get in touch with him and see what he is doing about the Philippines”. Several days later, on a Sunday morning, she felt led to phone me. Our family was in church when the phone “vibrated”. I tell a bit more of the story below in the November 4th blog. Now, what she did not know when she called that Sunday morning, and got me out of worship service for a few minutes, is that I was very distressed and actually praying that very moment about how the airline fares went up $600 per ticket between midnight and 6:30 that morning. I was very discouraged and feeling guilty for not having bought those tickets. When Amy called and asked with great enthusiasm how she could help, my heart leaped. I asked if she would like to help me get tickets at a reasonable price. She immediately went to work and I went back in Church and sang with a little more passion knowing that the Lord sent someone to help us get to the Philippines. You see the price increase on those tickets was nearly as much a Voyager water purifer. Just as our Pastor, Gary Ginn, was about to give the Benediction, my phone vibrated again. I waited a few moments, so as not to disrupt the service and rushed out the door. Sister Amy secured pricing for tickets for $600 less per ticket! And…..the connections just began. Authors note: It’s 2:51am and in a few hours, a very strategic contact (who Sister Emy miraculously directed us to) is coming to meet us at the hotel and take us to very isolated, devastated areas that desperately need clean drinking water. I’m going to stop this little narrative, go grab a few winks that I can function in the morning. I will continue this blog this evening. You’ll get a kick at how these seemingly insignificant things have grown! Better run for now and to get a few more hours sleep. This story has been brewing in my soul for days and now I have begun to put it into print.

Good night

Air Mobile Joe 

TO BE CONTINUED. …..How we met Pastor Sam Rendel, Colonel Jun Bailon & Colonel Ed AIR MOBILE TEAM ON THE MOVE / ON THE GROUND IN MANILA !