A final update....

Here is one final update of the Philippines trip...

God blessed so much in the final events of our meetings. Saying goodbye to all the people was hard. On the last night, most of the groups had a going away party. One site begged me to come back for their final night. We had a wonderful time with a sermon and then a social night with crazy Filipino games (some are rather unusual!). I had only been at this site one other time, but the people made me feel as though I had been there the whole time. They even gave me a going away present.

That night I met one little boy named Kenneth who was ten years old. He hung out with me the entire evening and always wanted to sit right next to me. When I said goodbye, he cried and cried. I felt terrible! The people have a way to just work themselves right into your heart. (Kenneth is the boy right next to me.)

The last Sabbath, there were over 1500-2000 baptisms (I didn't get the exact final count). It was amazing to stand by the edge of the pool and see so many commit their lives to Christ. It was so neat!!



After we were done in Manilla, we went down to the lower part of Luzon Island to a beach resort called Matabungkay. On the way down, we stopped to see Taal volcano, the world's smallest active volcano at only 406 meters high. It is described as a "crater within an island within a lake" because it stands as an island in Taal Lake. The lake was formed after the volcano, which used to be much larger, collapsed. It was really cool. The volcano is the tiny island in the forefront.

The final day in the Philippines, we took a boat to an absolutely beautiful island. It was a very tiny island, but it had cool things to see including an old ship and a type of Greek acropolis on the top that we climbed up to. The water around the island was absolutely amazing. It was emerald green in places and deep blue in others and it was so clear that you could see way below the surface. I went snorkeling for the first time and it was incredible. I saw so many different types of fish, star fish, coral, anenome, etc. I felt like I was looking down on an aquarium from the top. On the way back, we were blessed with a wonderful sunset.



























The trip back was uneventful--unlike the trip there. It has been good to be back, but jet lag hit me once again. I came back to a full stack of grading, which was rather unpleasant, but I am slowly making my way along. This weekend we are at Puget Sound, so I will have to post about my time here in another post.

p.s. I meant to post a picture of the "demise of the star apple" since Paeter requested it (see comment on previous post), but I forgot that it is on a friends computer, so I may just have to post that one later...

Another update...

It has been really hard for me to find time to post about all the things that are happening here. So once again, I'll include a lot of pictures to catch everyone up on the events of the past week. It is hard to believe that we have been here for a week and a half already. It seems like it has flown by already and at the same time, it seems that a lot has been packed into it as well.

On Tuesday, we went to the village of the staff member that is with us who is from the Philippines. It was so much fun to tour around his little village. We rode on motorbike tricycles from the main highway to his village because the road was too narrow for the bus. I think we were the amusement of the entire village seeing a bunch of white people riding around on the trikes. But it was fun! We took a long walk into the country side which is really pretty. They used to grow a lot of rice in the area but after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, the soil was too acidic from the volcanic ash. Now there are fish hatcheries all around. Notice the volcano in the background.


When the volcano erupted, it left so much volcanic ash in the area that some of the houses were completely buried. Others have only the roofs sticking out above the ground. This church used to be a lot taller than it is now. It was buried in 12 meters of ash. They have since just raised the floor in the inside of the church so the ceiling inside feels very low for it being a cathedral. The side windows are halfway sunk into the floor with only about 3-4 feet of the top of the window still exposed. It is really strange.


Out in the country, the fruit grows all over the trees there. We tried a new fruit there called a star apple (I can't remember what it is called in Tagalog) but it is so incredibly good. The fruit puts out a very sticky milky substance that makes your mouth feel really funny, but the inside of the fruit is almost like a jelly substance and is super sweet. I wish I could bring some back to the states.
This is one of my students and I eating a star apple. They are super messy to eat!


This is another fruit called a jack fruit. They are huge. I saw one cluster of jack fruit that had about 6 to 8 of these large fruits all growing together. I don't know how the branch can hold them up.


I haven't tried the star fruit when it is ripe, but I had it when it was green. They use it like a vegetable when it was green and cook it. It was really really good. The dish was called "come-and-see"... no, not really...:) I don't know how it is spelled in Tagalog, but that is how it is pronounced.

I don't think I have ever eaten as many different varieties of fruits as I have here in such a short amount of time. Most of them have been so good! We are in mango season right now so every day we eat tons of mangoes and since they are right of the tree, they are so good! Every day our meals consist of a large variety of mangoes, pineapples, papaya, bananas (they are wonderful here!), and a mixture of other fruits that I can't spell. I am getting spoiled!

While we were out in the country, I pet my first caribou and made friends with this cow. When I walked away, it tried to follow me.

We walked to this park in the village that had a lot of animal statues in it. Now I can say I have ridden a gorilla. He was a little harder than I expected and he didn't move... oh, well, maybe it is just a defective Filipino gorilla...


The other day, one of my students and I caught a gecko. I have been wanting to see one since I got here, so I was pretty excited to catch this one. His feet are super sticky so they can crawl across the ceiling.


In addition to all the fun things I have been doing here, I have been keeping busy with the evangelistic meetings. Every night, I go to a different site to watch each of my students preach. I am so proud of all of them. They are doing a wonderful job. One day last week, I reorganized their entire presentation for the 2300 days. The Share Him program was really confusing and the poor students were so frustrated that they couldn't understand it let alone preach it. I reorganized the entire presentation and then explained the entire 2300 days to the students who were going to preach. After that I worked individually with almost every speaker helping them tailor the sermon. At the conclusion of the day, I felt like I had prepared about 6 different sermons and was exhausted. But I am glad I was here to help them out of their pickle.

Some amazing things have been coming out of some of the sights. At one site, a woman came to the meeting one night after she had been randomly invited by one of the elders. She is not a religious person, but decided to accept his invitation to come. The night she came, they show the part of the Jesus video about Christ's baptism. She said she started to get goose bumps up here arms. Then one my students got up to preach. This lady was in absolute shock. She later explained to me what had happened. In December of 2001, she was sitting on her couch, when this being appeared in the room. This being told here that he would lead her to the true church. Being from a Catholic background, she asked the being if the Catholic church was the true church. He told her no... that it was corrupt and didn't teach the Bible. He then went on to explain that she would know the true church when she saw a video of Jesus baptism and then a American girl with long hair would begin to speak (a perfect description of the girl who spoke that night). In fact, (from what I understood) she was told there would be two or three American girls who would be preaching about the Bible (this is our only site with three girls). They being told here that when she saw this, this would be the true church. She told me that just three months ago, she moved to this province and when she moved, the being told her that it would be in this new location that the fulfillment of her dream would come. That night, she said she was overjoyed because she realized that what the being had told here 7 years ago actually happened. I wish you could have heard her express her story. She was so excited. Two days after this experience is when I met her and spoke with her. She told me that she felt this church was God's gift to her. I agree!


Today, I went with one of my students to a local radio station here in town. Every Sunday afternoon, Adventist laymen have a two hour radio timeslot. They asked my student to give a presentation on prophecy, so she preached about the 2300 days and the investigative judgment. for the first 35-40 minutes of the broadcast and then for the remaining 1 1/2 hours, we discussed the assurance we have in the judgment, the purpose of the investigative judgment, etc. Then callers called into the station and we answered live questions on the air. It was so much fun and a challenge to be able to answer questions like how we can prove there is a sanctuary in heaven, how we know the cleansing began in 1844, how to explain what the sanctuary is being cleansed from , how it got defiled in the first place, and how symbolically Christ can cleanse a sanctary in heaven. Thankfully we had two other laymen there that were helping us with the answers just in case we got stuck. It was a first time experience for me to be on a radio station, but it was such a blessing to share God with the people of the Philippines. They say that most of the their 3 millions listeners are non-Adventists. So I pray that God spoke through us today to teach people of the investigative judgment that is now happening on this earth.
It is late here...almost midnight. So I am headed to bed. Please continue to pray for our work here. We have 6 meetings left. God is still working on people's hearts.

a view of the Philippines...

This is the flight from Seattle to Toyko Japan. It was a great flight. All the seats have monitors in front that have games, flight info (maps of where the plane is, how fast it is traveling), etc. The best part was that we could play games with multiple partners so we would play with various people in our group. It kept us well entertained on the 11 hour flight.

I hadn't realized it until we got to the Philippines that they are celebrating their 100th year of Adventism in the Philippines. Their first converts were in 1908. It is really neat to be here 100 years later and be preaching the gospel message so more people can hear. All throughout this year there are major events, rallies, conferences, etc. This past Sabbath, we went to a huge event in a auditorium that seats thousands of people. There were so many Adventists there celebrating the events. Don Schneider gave the sermon. It was neat to be surrounded by so many Filipino Adventists.

The people here are absolutely amazing. They are so incredibly friendly. They open heart and home to you and welcome you right into their lives. We almost feel like celebrities in the way they treat us. It is humbling. They have a wonderful sense of humor too and make us laugh all the time!

I have been traveling around to all the different sites to hear each of my students preach. One site I went to last night was so nice with all the children and young people. Here are just a few pictures of the group.










Two of my students are co-preaching at this site. They are doing a wonderful job! The man on the far right is Benny Moore, the Share Him coordinator.



This morning, one of the pastors picked up my two students that are speaking at his church and myself and took us with his family to the park. It was wonderful to get "out of the city" (it is still in the city but at least it is away from the houses, markets, etc. and the air is cleaner to breathe). I had my first green coconut. (It is call buko here.) It is so amazing to watch them cut the thing! They are so skilled with the machete. The buko is really interesting to eat. It has a layer of thin meat on the top that you poke through, then you drink all the liquid out of the shell. Then you eat the meat that is really soft. It tastes good. Here are just a few pictures of our time out this morning. (Oh, ya, they do things early around here. We got ready to leave for the park at 6:30 am!)

This is the pastor, his wife, son and daughter, and grand daughter as well as my two students.






This is his grand daughter Keesha. She is only two. But she was so cute!










This is the little shop where we got the buko.








I wish I could post the video of this guy chopping the buko.










This is the inside of the buko...








Then we ate it on the hood of the car. It was fun...









This was a memorial at the park to Manuel Louis Quezon, a previous president of the Republic of the Philippines.









Here are just two other random photos of a jeepney ride we took It was fun, but the jeepney's here put out such pollution that it is hard to ride near the back. You about suffocate from exhaust fumes. It was funny watching all the locals being so amused with a bunch of Americans riding in a jeepney. They probably thought that was a funny sight. They kept waving and laughing. So we would wave and laugh back. It was rather entertaining.



















Please continue to pray for the work here. God is doing amazing things I know. I will keep you posted.