Tubing

Wiping the sleepies out of my eyes, I quickly glanced at my alarm clock – 5 am. “Good, I’ve got plenty of time,” I thought to myself. As quietly as possible, which never works when I am trying to, I quickly grabbed a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Checking my list and grabbing my gear I headed out to wait for a taxi in the cool fading morning. I could taste the excitement, or was that the humidity?

That day began like all the other missionary kid tubing trips down the Davao River in the Philippines, full of anxious anticipation and adventure. I was so excited you can barely sleep the night before. My mom made sure I had everything I needed, worrying like only mothers know how. My friends and I were off from school for Christmas break. The weather was perfect, having rained for almost three days straight. Two days before, while coming back from a dive trip, my friends and I decided we had better take advantage of the heavenly gift of rain. Friday, January 4th, 2002 was the day we began our adventure – an adventure of a life time.

The nine of us gathered at the Bangkerohan Jeepney terminal and loaded up. The whole way to Dominga, our shove-off point, we couldn’t stop talking about the river. Everyone gave their report of the rivers they had crossed when coming to the terminal. Each and every time the jeepney passed over a bridge, crazy white-neck foreigners stuck their heads out like ostriches, straining to get a glimpse of the mad rushing river. The Davao River was of course dark brown, but that’s the way it always was and we loved it.

None of us could have asked for a better opportunity to tub the river. We knew it was high and some of us had tubed a flood before, but this flood was different, there was some...

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...es, we were able to barter a ride back to Davao.

We all reached our families somehow or another, which was a gift from God. What I contributed to luck earlier was not luck at all but the grace and mercy of God. How else could all nine of us, some experienced tubers and some rookies, survive the worst flood in thirty-one years. What took us several hours to tub down on a normal tubing trip took less than an hour. The Davao River usually runs at ten kilometers per hour (about six miles per hour) but this time it was racing at a pace of twenty-two kilometers per hour (about fourteen mile per hour). The nightmarish song of the boulder sized rocks ringing beneath us as we tubed will forever be in my memory. God humbled and saved me from many things that day. Most importantly, he brought me closer to Him and to my friends. It is forever etched into my memory.