Philippines Journal 2007 #18

What a high day it was! It started off at after 8:00am with church; although we didn’t start proper until nearly 9:00am. When we arrived at 8am, we found out that the big sports complex where we were to have the meetings was also booked for a soccer tournament. And since it is part of the big Tuna Festival they got priority. So we met in the gym; we packed approximately 5000 persons in there! But we still had the back swimming pool of the complex reserved for the baptism.

We have lots and lots of photos of the baptism - and a few videos. The candidates kept coming and coming, and all the 18 of us officiating ministers were kept busy. Many of those being baptized were quite small and we had to lift them up in the 3-foot shallow part of the pool. Of course many are much older than they look. A kid that looks to us like 6 years old is most likely a 13 y.o! When we had finished, we had baptized 862. But that’s not the end of the story. We immediately got a report that 60 other candidates had transportation problems and will be baptized in their local church tomorrow. So the total for this first baptism is 922! Praise the Lord.

The afternoon was long. It started with a Musical Extravaganza, followed by a Vacation Bible School graduation. By the time we had heard from numerous singing groups (singing three or four songs each) and testimonies by various and sundry (the one by David Sandvik in one of the Filipino languages, and the duet with his wife Brittney we so well received), it was about 6:00pm – the time when we were to end. And we still had not begun my evening meeting which we had pushed up to 4:00pm – supposedly. I didn’t want to be the “Beast” and wear out the saints; so I showed them the PowerPoint slides and summarized my sermon in 10 minutes! We then thanks all those who assisted us and left 70 WWC shirts for them.

The folks really appreciated our ministry here and gave each of us personal engraved plaques expressing the same. Our students were also very touched by the love and care of the people. Emmanuel just told me that he was brought to tears as members from his church said goodbye tonight. As I write our security guards have taken them out for a night meal at Pizza Hut.

We are up and off to Manila tomorrow morning for a couple of days. I hope we will have internet service there so that I can keep you updated. Please pray for our safe return home on Tuesday.