We Made It Home

So we have made it home. I will compile a few more blogs about the trip and post them here. But for tonight, I am going to go to sleep!

Cebu Lecheon

Today is our last full day in the Philippines. I will be going to Deparo later today to visit with some of the people there. But for now, we are waiting on lunch. We are having Cebu Lecheon. It is a roasted pig flown in from the island where Cebu is located. I have not seen it yet, but here is a picture of Paul holding the knife we will use to cut it!!!

I will get some pictures later for you to see!

Great Day of Ministry

Well, it is late and I need to get a shower and get to bed, but I spent the night away from "base camp" last night and really got to see more of the "real Philippines." I was able to visit some of the homes of the people that the churches here minister to. It is a totally different world here when it comes to poverty. I have included a couple of pictures of the homes we visited. The twins you see here were just born to a mother in the home you see here. The house was nothing more that plywood and bamboo.

This is the small house the twins lived in...

Here are the twins...swinging in their little hammock!

After we visited them, we visited with some people who were helping with a girl who just gave birth to another baby. She doesn't have any family, but needed a lot of help. She tested positive for Hepatitis A. The baby was being treated so she would not come down with it as well. Our church was able to pay for the blood the mother needed. It is amazing how far American dollars go here. She needed one pint of blood. If no one was willing to donate (which seems to be taboo here among some of the people), she had to buy it. One bag of blood - $500 Pisos. That is equal to $10.00 American. How crazy is that!

Something else I learned about the Philippines. You cannot give blood here if you have a tattoo. I am actually the mother's blood type, so I was considering donation, but once the pastor's remembered that I had tattoos, that came to a quick end. It is not permitted for a tattooed person to donate blood here. I can't say that I blame them. I guess you can't be too sure where they got the tattoo and if the needle was dirty or not!!!

This is baby Lilian Grace...

This is Lilian's mother. Notice the car in the back ground. There is actually no glass in that window...and the hospital had no Air Conditioning...Just open air and a fan!


So I am going to bed now. I hope you enjoy the pictures of the babies. I know that every time I see one, I want to bundle them up and take them home!

Hot day of Preaching!

Today was a great day. Paul and I went to Bocaue today and I preached at that service. I videoed part of a song while their worship team was playing. It was like being in youth ministry again. It was loud and fast! During this first service, Paul ordained the churches first deaconess. It was a cool experience!

After church we went to the mall to eat. (The mall is a topic for a blog later!) We had Wendy's for lunch. It was nice to eat some American food. We walked around for a while and then headed back to the church.

At the church, Paul and I split up. He went to Pulilan. It is a church they are starting across the street from a college. It was full of young people. Paul said it was great. 15 people gave their life to Christ.

I went to Daparo and preached at Pastor Efran's church. It was a building the size of most people's living rooms. They had 40+ people seated in there and 10 or so outside. Even though it was a small room, there was a small sound system...and it was loud! I preached again and Pastor Gary translated for me. It was the 3rd time he translated for me and we had fun with it.

It is very different preaching to people who have nothing. If I talked about something they didn't have (ie. a car) Gary would translate it into bicycle. I am learning that is for sure.

We are starting a VBS here at Grandma Grace's house tomorrow. We will spend the day with the Pastor's of the churches and then back here for VBS.

The bonus points go to my mom, sister, and Noah. They all knew that aso was dog. Yes, some people eat dog here! I will spend some time writing a longer post offline and post it later with some pictures!

Manila - Day 4 & 5

Yesterday we went to Baguio where Grandma Grace's Brother lives. It was a loooooooooog trip. We only went 158 miles. That is like driving to the San Francisco Airport and back from Manteca, but it took us 8 hours to get there and 7 hours to get back. Needless to say, the roads and cars in the Philippines are on a totally different level than the US! I am tired and I have to preach in 2 places tomorrow (Sunday here in the Philippines), so I am going to have to update these days later. They were eventful and worth blogging about, but need to rest.

I will leave you with one note. The people in Baguio eat aso. During the day today Homer, the son of the man we went to visit, brought in some aso. Judging from Beth's response to my last blog, I am lucky it wasn't safe for us to eat. According to Homer, the aso my have had rabies and you can't cook the meat enough for it to be safe.

What is aso you ask? Bonus points for anyone who can look up the word!

Manila - Day 3

So we didn't do much today. We are getting up at 4:00 am to go to a city to visit the brother of Grandma (Lola in Filipino) Grace. So we took it easy today. The highlight of the day just happened. But I will tell you that last!

First we went to the "Mega" mall. We took a taxi. The taxi ride was 50 pisos...which converts to about $1.oo American! The realities of the country here disappear when you enter the Mall. It is like you walked off the street into America. There are tons of fast food restaurants from America. Wendy's, Kenny Rogers' Chicken, Dairy Queen, Krispy Kreme Donuts, Duncan Donuts, and KFC. Those are just the ones I remember. After converting some money, we walked around for a while. We really didn't see anything we wanted, but you can buy some pretty good stuff over hear for cheap!

After we left the Mall, we went home and hung out for a while. One of the pastors from the church here came for dinner. We had a while before dinner so Paul, Pastor Rolly, and I went for a walk. We made our way done to the market area and stopped in at the Starbucks. We hung out there for a while and headed back.

We had supper with several people, but before dinner, I learned something about the Filipino people. THEY LOVE AMERICAN IDOL! The actually get the show from the states on the same week as the Americans watch it. So tonight I watched the little blonde girl get kicked off. Pastor Rally loves the show and he knows all the contestants names. It is amazing how enthralled they are with American culture. I think that about everyone we have had any extended contact with have asked us about President Obama.

So finally, Paul and I experienced something that we swore we would not do! One of Lola Grace's nieces (Arora) decided that she was going to buy us balut. If you don't know what it is, you can read about it here. So Paul decided that he was going to try it after Arora dissected the egg for us. I decided that I needed to experience this for myself, so I took a bite. I will admit that we ate the safest part of the balut, but I can say that I tried it. Surpisingly, it didn't taste all that bad. It really only tasted like an egg. I have included a few pictures for you.

The dissected balut. See the bird on the top of the plate?

Paul taking that fateful bite!

I will be in another part of the country tomorrow, so there is a chance I will not have internet. I will be back in Manila on Saturday (Friday American Time), so I will post again then.

Manila - Day 2

So today was much more hectic than yesterday. We started with a trip to the fresh market. This isn't your ordinary American Fresh market. There were freshly butchered things all over the place. I had to breath through my mouth most of the time we were there. I didn't get any pictures of the market, but I think we will go back, so I hope to get pictures then. Not only was everything freshly butchered, there were other live animals waiting their turn on the butcher's block. Most of it was fish, but the chickens were what caught my eye. The guy was still plucking feathers on his current kill, so I wasn't able to watch the actual death blow!

That brings me to my next point...I am going to have to write a blog just on food. I will do that after my trip is over so I can collect all the pictures and put my thoughts in order. Paul and I have posed for pictures with food several times already and I have other stories that do not have pictures for backup support. So when I get home, I will compile the pictures and dedicate one blog to the adventure of eating in a foreign country!

After a couple trips to the market on the back of a tricycle (no picture yet, but I will get one!) we were off to visit a local bible institute that is training young leaders to minister in the local churches. It was a great experience. Carson Oaks Community Church sponsored 3 students last year and they are doing very well.

After our visit there we went to a local mall where you have to be frisked by a guard to get in. The lady guard who frisked me but her hand on the small of my back, looked into my eyes, and said "Hello, how are you?" Needless to say, I was a bit uneasy with her friendliness. I quickly moved on and found the other guys who were with me. We enjoyed a dessert called "Halo Halo" (pronounced like hollow) and stood around and laughed about how bad the trashcan smelled!

We then went to the prison and I preached to the men and women incarcerated there. That was a first for me on a couple of fronts. 1. I have never preached in a prison. 2. I have never preached through an interpreter. Both went surprisingly well. The condition of the prison, like most of the Philippines, is drastically different from the states. There were 8 to 10 men in one cell. There was no air conditioning. It is about 95 degrees outside and the humidity is about 65%. There are 3 beds for the 10 men and there is a chance that more men could be placed in the cell. Last year there were closer to 18 men in the cell. It was a humbling experience to say the least. The men were very respectful as is the entire culture here. I led the men in a prayer to receive Christ and encouraged them to make a change in their life. Pastor Gary did the translating and really made me sound good...at least from my perspective.

I have attached a pictures from the prison to help you put the experience in perspective.


I hope to be able to post tomorrow, but not sure if I will have a signal. Keep praying for us. We are going to the mountains in a couple of days and it is like a 6 hour drive. (In America is would be like 2 hours, but the driving is a subject for a blog all by itself!!!)

In Manila

Paul and I hopped a plane from Taiwan and landed in Manila around 11:30 am local time. The best way to know what time it is here (if you are in the pacific time zone of the US) is to add 15 to the local time there...so at 8:30 pm on Monday I landed in Manila at 11:30 am Tuesday. So I am living in the future. I gave my friend Daniel the lotto numbers for the next day. If you want them, let me know and I will see what I can do!

After landing, we spent the rest of the day at Grandma Grace's house here in the Philippines. She actually lives in Stockton, CA, but still has a house here that her family uses. I had hoped to lose some weight while I was over here. After experiencing the airport food, I was pretty sure that was going to happen, but once I was in Manila, all that went out the window. I think I have eaten 5 times since lunch. The Filipino people are not a very big people, but they don't take no for an answer. I hope I am able to get out of here with my current weight intact!

Tomorrow we are going to go visit a prison in the area and then meet with some of the leaders in the church here. But we won't do that until after we eat a huge breakfast!!!

On that note, I will leave you with a some pictures of something that came with the lunch on the plane. I am not sure what it is called, but it is basically a gelatinous substance made from rice with a slightly sweetened center. When I first saw it I thought it looked like something from an episode of Star Trek. I tried it...it wasn't bad, but it really didn't have much taste...

Paul holding the mysterious substance!

The Substance after I broke into it!

In Taiwan

We made it to Taiwan. Paul and I have a 2 hour layover here in Taipei. We should be in the Philippines in time for lunch.

We had a very good flight. We slept for the first 7 or 8 hours. The last 5 or so were pretty good. I woke up several times just after we took off. I am not sure what they were serving for breakfast, but the smell was a bit overwhelming...it kept waking me up!

After we woke up we had a snack. Our choices were a bag of mixed nuts...that were really more like a trail mix...I opted for the moon pie. It was good, but it would have been better if they were serving RC Colas with it!

We are here surfing the net and enjoying starbucks...Taipei style...I hope to have more internet capability later and I will keep you up-to-date on our trip!