Now this is a story of the longest hike of my life.
It’s the end of the school year, schools are having closing programs. One in the village where I was living called Kemantian. One in a village called Kensuli, another in a place called Emrang and lastly a place called Kebgen. Noticed the “e” does not sound like an “e” it’s closer to an “a” sound.
I had to opportunity to go to Kensuli, which is about a 30min hike at a good pace, I also had the opportunity to visit a more remote village called “Kebgen”. This is no easy hike. I can tell you that. I remember getting ready the day before. They told me to travel as light as possible.
After the hike I can see why they told us that. We started around 7:30 in the morning. Around 10:00 in the morning it started to rain. The rain came in hard and then it softened…but it was continuous for the rest of the hike. It came to a point that we needed to eat, so we decided to stop to eat. Mind you, we are completely soaked. After only a few minutes of eating we were shivering cold. We ate as fast as possible because we were so cold.
The few minutes felt like hours, after we continued for a while we were warming up. While we continued, it rained some more…and some more until we reached our destination. We arrived shortly after 7:30 pm, if you are good at math…that’s 12 hours. Twelve hours before we had begun our hike, for at least nine of those hours we were wet. We were tired to say the least. I thought I would not make it.
My strength was failing me as I dragged my feet along. We were very encouraged by singing as we arrived to the remote village. It was a Wednesday evening when we arrived, so there was mid-week prayer meetings. It was a good booster to finish the long hike. We had finally made it to this remote village. Never have I ever felt so tired as that time. This picture here shows the survivors of that hike and one pair of broken sandals.
There’s more to this story but, at the end I remember how I questioned God. I asked God, “why is this happening to us?” “Please stop this rain” “my camera is going to get wet, please no more rain”. I remember as I said some of these things, it seemed to rain even harder. I was very confused at all of this, but at the end I thanked God for protecting us on that trail. In the end my camera did not get wet, only a few clothes that I had brought.
It was a very humbling experience and the people there amazed me. Their humble lifestyle, humble home, thoughtful and caring even when they don’t own much. It was worth that 12 hours of hiking to arrive there, and you know what? I would do it all over again. I thank our Heavenly Father for the way he led us there safely and brought us home safely as well.
Hope this encourages you to trust God even in difficulty. Blessings 🙏🏽
Ivan Navarrete received a degree in Math from Southwestern Adventist University in 2018. He served as a missionary in the Philippines from 2018-2020 as a math teacher, and later on in the area of administration. https://afmonline.org/post/longest-hike-of-my-life