Our host pastor here in Bacolod has been Pastor Gil Fernandez. He has been a minister from heaven, taking us anywhere we wanted or needed to go from a bank to get money or to our places for service, or to the best places in town to eat. He has been so very helpful as an interpreter of culture and coming from a pastors view, he helped us all greatly in understanding how people view us to how they respond to invitations, to the fact that it is against the law to divorce here! The greatest cultural problem is poverty but the greatest problem is always sin! Pastor Gil's wife Leah is a teacher at West Negros College and her help in working with us there was again an unexpected blessing! I know that Pastor Gil will be reading this blog...so to him I say, we love you. You were a true servant to us! We were able to see some of the country side one day we went to a place known as the Seven Falls. But you had to hike up and up and up to see each of the falls. Only five of us made it to the 6th falls where we could swim... wow what fun. Only Daymond made it to the 7th fall and he also discovered a community of people at the top. We saw people drying rice on the road and the cars just drove around the rice.
I guess one of the unexpected adventures for Dawn and Luke and myself happened out of our ignorance. We all had been to eat at a special place called Bob's. It was late that night and being very tired we decided to leave before the others to get back to the room to be in bed soon. So we stepped out to find a taxi but after waiting a while and seeing no taxi's to call we decided to ride the local transportation which is called a Jeepney. It is a vehicle with no windows and no doors and you just get into the back when they stop and it goes. We thought that it worked like a, taxi just tell the driver where you want to go right! Wrong! After taking off it seemed that the driver spoke little English. But what little we could understand he said that his route did not go to our location so we rode and rode and rode. Then we stopped he said we need to transfer to another Jeepney that would take us to where we needed to go. Remember we were stopping every little bit picking up people and dropping them off. It is like riding in the back of a cattle car! So we rode some more going through some very dark parts of the city really having no idea where we were. Then we stopped again the second driver telling us to transfer to another car that would take us to where we needed to go! Needless to say by this time Dawn was praying nervously and Luke was uneasy as well! But then a young lady got on and sat next to Dawn. Dawn asked do you speak English she said yes. She asked her if she knew where West Negros College was and she said she was a student there… praise the Lord! She said we were now very close to the school and to our hotel. Praise God. The next day when we were at the school Dawn ran into the girl and again thanking her deeply that she had been our help.
Well today we are packing to go back to Ilo Ilo to maybe have a couple of days to relax and hopefully go to the beach! We are blessed and the whole team has worked like champs with a spirit of whatever it takes attitude to make it happen. Mimosa Lane is thought of well because of the team that God put together! Church you’re a blessing to share the journey with! Keep praying that we will make it back safe and sound. Until next time!
In His Grace,
Rocky
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