A Team Tested — and a Dream on the Porch

May 2011 was the month the young team nearly came apart. Months of physical battering — Cally's infected motorbike burns and drug reaction, the children's sand-fly bites, Philip's dengue — gave way to something subtler: quiet, corrosive suspicion between teammates. When they finally sat down and talked, the accusations dissolved; they found they felt and wanted exactly the same things, and "the world's weight lifted off our shoulders." Back on the island, sleeping on the porch with two Moken boys, Philip had a dream so vivid he woke unsure it had happened: a powerful dark figure that overwhelmed him until he commanded it in the name of Jesus, a black coat that turned whiter than snow when he gave God the glory, and Moken families worshipping by candlelight in their own language and their own way. The month closed with a visa run to Penang and the first signs of the visa struggle that would dog the mission for years — only three-month visas were available in Asia.