A Special Trip To Our Brethren In The Philippines

What a wonderful Sabbath! The pastor and his daughter singing special music. Very inspiring, very wonderful. And also, this hall being renovated the way it is, is just wonderful to see a new carpet. No tape on the floors, no big gashes, new walls freshly painted and everything. It's just very, very nice. They're actually a bit frightening the last couple weeks before this happened because they were choosing the colors and choosing the carpet and choosing the, I guess it's called a chair rail there on the side. There were several different designs presented and there was discussion about the various designs. Some of them were quite adventuresome. Some of them...

And then I was asked, well, you have the final word. I said, no, no, I don't want to start any controversy in the church because some people will hate me, some people will love me. So I stay out of it now. Everybody loves me because I stay out of it. But it's really wonderful to see just everything put into place. It looks good. The blue is fine. Everything is really very, very wonderful. Anyway, welcome to everyone who's on the webcast. I just... Last Sabbath was in Manila, Philippines, and just came back to work on this Tuesday. And I had the sermon this coming Sabbath. I was thinking, what should I speak about? There's all kinds of subjects to speak about. My wife says, you know, why don't you talk about your trip to the Philippines? I said, well, should I do a slide presentation? What kind of thing should I do? And I thought to myself, well, you know, giving a slide presentation is one thing and try to cooperate with the sermon.

I thought, well, still, just having a presentation showing the sites, the people, the work, the life in the Philippines, mostly about the church people, is a sermon in itself. And that's the all I thought I would do here today, is to give you a feeling for our churches in the Philippines. Now, I've got to get set up here a little bit.

So, from July 10th through the 22nd, I traveled with senior pastor Earl Romer to the Philippines.

I love geography. I love history. And I thought I knew quite a bit about the Philippines, but it takes coming there and seeing it for yourself to really fully appreciate everything that's there, from the people, the church, the history, the location, and how everything is put into place.

And that's what this trip did for me. It really gave me a sense of understanding what's there.

The Philippines is a nation of 100 million people. The Philippine islands, there's 7100 of them, and they say that's at high tide. Low tide, there are more islands that appear.

But there are, we have 26 churches in Bible studies. Most of them are actual church services all throughout the three major areas of the Philippines. There are 26 churches, there are 7 pastors, and about 550 people that attend church on the Sabbath. Now, one time, the Philippines was one of our bigger areas internationally. There were 5,000 members of the church at one time, and 50 ministers. And there was a whole ministerial services or church administration department just in the Philippines, and we had personnel from Pasadena that would go work in the Philippines for 9 months in teaching classes and training ministers. That was in a time before.

I first heard about the Philippines, and it's been an area that's been organized a long time ago, starting with Gerald Waterhouse back in the middle, early 1960s. But I heard about it for the first time when I was in Minneapolis attending one of my very first church services in 1966. And on one Sabbath in the spring of 1966, we had a special guest speaker, Art Daken, and he was the manager, he was the presiding manager, regional director, I guess you might say, of the Philippines, and gave a very, very exciting and rousing presentation about the Philippines. But that's what you have here in the Philippines. The city of Manila, the capital, which is right here, is the fifth largest city in the world. 20 million people live in Manila, Philippines. That's where we were last Sabbath. It is a very congested city. It can take up to one hour just to travel a mile or two through town. You can go either very quickly or very, very slowly, but it's a city with a great deal of congestion. There are three major areas, and I thank Whitney Creech for helping me organize and to make these slides up. The city, the country is divided into three zones, the north, the islands in the middle, and Mindanao in the south. In the north, you have Luzon, which is the second biggest landmass, and that's where the city of Manila is located. Then you have the Visayas. That's the islands in the middle, which go all the way. And I'm not even totally sure if these are considered part of the Visayas, but all of this is the Visayas. That includes Bacalod over here to the western Visayas to Leyte and Samara in the east. And there we have two pastors, or we have two elders. We have Raul Bilacate and Mr. Jose Campos.

And then in Mindanao in the south, this is the largest island. It's the most agriculture of the islands, and that's where our office is located. And our principal church is Davao in the south. That's also where the summer camp is located and the southern Feast of Tabernacles. Now, we also have a northern Feast of Tabernacles, when I showed you the picture there with all the dots, way in the north, north of Manila. And then we have one very much in the south, which has 400 people attend the Feast of Tabernacles.

Our trip began when we arrived Thursday in Mindanao in the south. Now, this is the area where it is the most troublesome politically in the Philippines right now. There have been terrorist activity in Mindanao. There has been, it's a Muslim area, not predominantly, but there are many Muslims, some terrorists, and also is noted for a religious cult called the Son of God, which is right in Davao. And this cult actually is growing and expanding. This person proclaimed himself or was actually proclaiming the return of Christ.

And Christ didn't return on his schedule, so he said, well, I must be Christ then. And people said, well, I guess you're right. And it has created a following and a movement that's really quite amazing. The first place we went to, actually, when we arrived on Thursday afternoon, or Thursday about noon, the macarags, Pastor Macareg, said, you need to rest and you take it easy. He said, no, we really want to get right on to seeing what we have here.

So we went out to the area of summer camp, and I was truly amazed as to how, what a beautiful place it is. It's a commercial place for camps and so forth, but we've been running camp there, the church, for a good 10 years or more. And it's called Eden Resorts. And when we drove in there, the macarags had just an amazing relationship with the management and staff there. And camp is held there every year in April. Now, this year, for the budget, we don't have budget to do the camp for the first time in a long time.

And after seeing the way that the macarags have run the camp and what it's done for the morale of the kids from all over the Philippines, because the youth come from all the way in Luzon to Mindanao to the camp. And I would like to see us be able to do camp and do something, perhaps through good work, through LifeNets, to be able to have camp there again next year. It's a very, very beautiful location where so many things are in place. It's wooded, it's halfway up a mountain, it's a little bit cooler than the hot climate, as we were experiencing there, mostly temperatures in the 90-95 range in humidity to match.

But it's a very, very beautiful camp location. It has soccer fields, it has basketball courts, it has places to swim, places to hike, and truly an amazing place for summer camp. All kinds of strange fruits there. I don't even know what this is. Little airplanes, but very tasty little fruits. They had a fruit stand right outside the camp that I had never seen some of these things. This is a one that is of greatest interest. It's called durian. It's a smelly fruit. It's called the fruit of kings, and it says tastes like, you know what, but tastes like heaven.

And here's a picture of me holding a durian. And actually I tasted it. We had it for dinner at the Macaregs home. And I really want to experience that because it's not allowed in hotel rooms, it's not allowed on buses, it's not allowed anywhere. It's like, you know, a bomb. And, you know, you're not allowed to, you know, have it anywhere. But the Macaregs had it. They had it covered up with cellophane paper, and then it was just released for us to eat the fruit. And it tastes like eggnog.

It just really tastes great. Well, so much for that story. I see you making faces. At the restaurant that we stayed at, the Marco Polo Hotel, they always had durian desserts. And here they had creme brulee that was made from durian and these durian parfaits. In fact, I couldn't even get to one because they were all taken by the guests beforehand.

Philippines, all these interject here, has a very interesting history. I think I should say a few things about the history of the Philippines. Philippines was discovered, so to speak, by Magellan in 1521.

Actually, Magellan was killed in the Philippines when he landed in about the same place, or very similar to the place where many hundreds of years later, Douglas MacArthur came ashore when he said, I will return. The Philippines then became the possession of Spain for the next 370 years, from 1521 until 1898, when it was ceded over to the United States as part of the Spanish-American War. That's why there are so many Spanish names and places. The Philippines itself is named after King Philip of Spain, but the country has so many Spanish titles names. Everything else are pastors, such as Jose Campos. I mean, that sounds like he's from... Are you from Mexico? No, I'm from the Philippines. Raul Villacate. I mean, these are very, very Spanish names of the places that are there, but you never hear Spanish spoken. I'm sure that some people speak Spanish, but not a word of Spanish is to be spoken. It's not like this country, where oftentimes you'd call on the telephone and press one for English, press two for Spanish, you know, but in the Philippines, there is no Spanish spoken, but it has a very rich Spanish culture. After 1898, it was a possession of the United States until it became a free country in 1946. So when Japan attacked the Philippines, they were attacking the United States, and they attacked the Philippines the same day that they attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. So they were attacking the United States and the MacArthur family, Douglas MacArthur's father was an American administrator working in Manila, and the family lived in the Philippines. MacArthur wasn't sent over to the Philippines as a general. He was already established there. He was working there. That was part of his life, and that was part of his love for the people that he had. Okay, there's the durian desserts. Here are some of the Ed Macareg family. The Macaregs have been real stalwarts and pillars in the church. In fact, they're Macaregs in all the zones of the Philippines. So you never say anything about anybody because everybody's related to everybody in the country. I mean, you wouldn't dare. They're ministers whose kids are married to, you know, one another's kids. Off to the left is son Richard. Then you have Daniel, who is the assistant office manager. Myself and Ed Macareg to my left. This is at that fruit stand.

Here's another fruit that I have never seen before called a meringue. And again, this is not allowed in some hotel rooms. It doesn't smell as bad as durian, but we opened one up. The durian wasn't quite ready to eat, and we were afraid to open it because of all the horror stories about it. But the meringue we did open up, and it really is a good tasting fruit. It has little tiny little balls inside, and we just opened up one of those fruits and ate the whole thing.

They have so many interesting modes of transportation, and most of them are bicycles and motorcycles that are converted into vehicles for transporting up to eight people. We saw a motorcycle with a side car hauling eight people at one time. The cities have limits, saying you can only have three people in your motorcycle within the city limits. But believe me, out on the road, I cannot believe how many people were using this mode of transportation. And we'll see more pictures of it coming up here. Then, the camp is about an hour out of Manila, or out of Davao. About halfway back to town is the Girl Scout camp, called GSP, Girl Scouts of the Philippines, where the feast site is located. And there they have typically 400 people for the feast every year. Next year, we hope to, not this coming year, but in 2014, open up a new feast site in the Visayas, in the Middle Island area. This is a son Richard. He is the media person, the one who does the websites, one of the nine employees of the church office.

This is the grounds of the Girl Scout camp, and it's very affordable for the members. Staying their costs as little as $2 a night for some of the accommodations to just regular hotel accommodations at the feast site. And there's the lady who's the main administrator at the camp, and there's Ed Macareg and myself with her. And she was just very, very good friends. She was so happy to see Ed. We have been there, good customers, out there for many, many years.

Here's a water tank that we installed. In fact, we installed one of two water tanks at the feast site, because there was very little water pressure at peak times for the people staying at the feast. So it was a life-ness project. We installed two 2,000-liter water tanks that provided water for peak periods. And the Girl Scout camp just was so very, very thankful to have this. And here's the other water tank, and the pumps to pump the water up into them. But I have gotten so many thank yous for that. A whole book of thank yous from people from the Girl Scout proprietors to the church members, because they had water during shower time. Actually, a very, very pleasant location. And we've thanked Dave and Denise Dobson. He's a pastor in the southeast, who has gone to the Philippines the last two years for the feast and has been going again this coming fall. Filipinos have large families. These are some of the two-dollar rooms. They seat up to maybe 14 people asleep in the same room. The Filipinos are very family-oriented. It's just amazing how, you know, people really get along with one another as families. It's kind of a different mentality than here. There are quite a few signs about leprosy and identifying leprosy. You know, we don't think of that as something that's, you know, common. We think of it as a biblical thing, but leprosy is a problem in that part of the world. Here's another form of transportation that has become very, very dominant in the Philippines and unique to the Philippines. I've never seen it anywhere else. It's called the jeepney, and at first it looks like just crowded little vehicles with all kinds of people all sitting close to one another. It must be awfully uncomfortable and awfully smelly, but it isn't so at all because I actually took a ride on a jeepney myself. But what happened is after World War II, the United States left thousands of jeeps behind in the Philippines and sold them for one dollar. And the people converted them into public transportation vehicles, extending them. I don't know how the world they did it, but they took these jeeps and made them into public transportation like buses and vans. And now they've designed them to have this thing that looks like a jeep. Actually, they're made in Japan, of all places, and, you know, they're shipped down to the Philippines, then they put the outer cover on them, and they each one is painted differently. They have amazing signs and interesting, humorous appearances.

In fact, the one thing I did want to have for the Philippines is I have a model jeepney in my office. I value that because it really is the spirit of the Philippines. This is the view from my hotel of the city of Davao. And here's church services. This was a wonderful day. This is two weeks ago in Davao. We had 146 people come to services. Now, the Davao church itself is more like about 95 people or so, but they had people from outlying areas who came to church services. This is just the Davao church, and the Filipinos love to have their pictures taken, and they love to have you in the pictures. I had been photographed hundreds of times, and the reason I'm in so much of these pictures that you'll see is because they had another photographer with us that took a lot of pictures. Normally, I'm the one taking pictures, and so therefore I'm not in them, but these were taken by other people. But there's Earl Romer and myself, and we're wearing barons. That's the dress of the Filipinos, and believe me, it is very, very comfortable. They're oversized, they're loose, you wear them on the outside, and that's normal. I wouldn't necessarily feel normal here. I went out to dinner with some people last night, and I wore my baron, and I felt funny, you know, in this country. But in the Philippines, you wear this very beautiful baron, and these are the ones, they're the formal ones, the long-sleeved barons that Earl Romer and I wore to services. They're very, very comfortable. But that's the Dval Congregation. A very excited group, respectful.

To me, what struck me the most was the children who were so well-dressed. The children were just very beautifully dressed, and they were so well-behaved and so respectful. They'd come up to me, they wanted to be hugged, you know, they were so huggable, they were just absolutely wonderful. I just thoroughly enjoyed being there. Here's another group of people from another adjoining church with the new elder, whose name is Merlitou Tonog. Here he is to the right, and his wife, Venetia. They're both professional people. He's just retired, both are school teachers, and she was a superintendent of schools. Very, very dignified people. We had dinner with him after services. I just really enjoyed being with them. She gave Beverly a nice little gift of durian bars and some embroidered napkins. This family came in, the husband and wife, came in four hours by motorcycle to services. I can't imagine hanging on to somebody, you know, because she rode behind him and hugged him for four hours, you know, coming to Sabbath services. In fact, up in the church in Manila, we had a family that drove seven hours just to come to Sabbath services, that's Sabbath. But this family came by motorcycle, it took him four hours.

Here are some of the employees at the church office. This is BL, who is the receptionist. This is Stella, she's a CPA, and she does the accounting for the church. But the young people are all enthusiastic. I have about 50 new Facebook friends from the Philippines just before this trip and after. There's Richard Macareg and his wife, and I'm going to show you some of Richard Macareg and his little daughter. The children are just unbelievably sweet and just wonderful. And here's me with those little kids. And it was no problem at all lining them up for pictures. They just wanted to have their picture taken over and over again. Here are some of our scholarship students in the Philippines that received scholarships through the church and through LifeNets. They all wanted their picture taken. And there's Charles Macareg, who was an ABC student, I believe 2001 here. That's him with his wife, Isis, and their little daughter.

This woman, her husband was killed in a motorcycle accident just a month before, and that's her, along with her three children.

You see the children, just their look on their face.

Here's another Jeepney. Sorry for all the Jeepneys, but I just got a big kick out of taking pictures of these vehicles. There's Mr. Tonog and his wife, Venetia, which I already told you about. They live, and he pastors a church about two hours outside of Devou. Normally, it doesn't come to Devou for services, but he did on this Sabbath. We actually ordained four Filipino elders in 2011, because we had quite a few of them leave. Not that many brethren left, but we had about four or five elders leave us in 2010, 2011. And I would say that all the new people that we have, and I did spend time with all of our elders. I was extremely pleased with their maturity, dignity, love for the brethren, and desire to serve. But we have, on the island of Mindanao in the south, we have Ed Macareg and we have Marlito Tonog.

Here's another form of transportation. It's the covered, well, I already kind of told you about that motorcycle with an outrigger. They're called Taxicals, and it takes, it costs about 20 cents to ride one, and you just kind of wave your hand, wave one down, it'll take you to where you want to go. But there are literally hundreds of them. They're just a long line of them as they proceed through through town. This is one of the high points of our trip. We went to visit a young lady who's been imprisoned, she and her brother, for life. Her name is Jed C. You might have known her story, have read about it in the United News. She grew up in the church, and against the wishes and counsel of her pastor, she married a Chinese man who was a drug dealer. She had nothing to do with a drug dealing, and one night, this was December 31st, 2004, the police came and did a raid on their house. I guess because there were a number of people there collected, some of the drug dealer people that were at the home, and they had the raid done on December 31st because that's when the fireworks go off for the New Year's, and they wanted to have any gunfire being masked as fireworks. Six people were killed. Her husband escaped, and she's never heard from him since, but she assumes that the police later caught up with him and killed him. The drug laws are extremely tough in Mindanao. The mayor of Mindanao has a no-tolerance life sentence policy against any drug dealing. Because she was the wife and couldn't prove her innocence, and the newspaper article in the local newspaper even explained the judgment of the court that because she was not able to establish her innocence, it wasn't that she was proven guilty, she wasn't able to establish her innocence, she was pronounced guilty of complicity in the drug dealing and sentenced to life in prison. She'd been in prison now for eight years. She has a daughter who's four years old, who's 12 years old now, and her brother was also arrested, who was not at the scene, and also sentenced to life imprisonment at a maximum security prison about three or four miles away from where she is.

She'd been visited quite a bit by our church members, and we had a very wonderful day with her. We brought lunch, and she has risen to a very high management position at the prison.

She's kind of a manager of the other woman at the prison, and she's looked up to with great respect. In fact, they wouldn't even bother having had to have us come in, sign the real prison to talk to her. She came out to the lobby in the main area, and we sat with her and brought this chicken from like a Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's called Jolly Bee's Chicken, and we had lunch with her.

She has a wonderful attitude. She's not hateful at all. She has an appeal in the works, and she hopes that it'll be overturned. It looks like there is good chance that there may be something developing, but it's awfully slow in coming, both for her and for her brother, because they were not involved. They had no proof that they were involved in any drug deal. There's been no evidence whatsoever about them being involved. And she just says that she regrets the fact that she went against the wishes of her parents, the wishes of the pastor, and married somebody outside who did this, this Chinese man. But 80% of the drug dealing is done by the Muslims in the community, and the rest pretty much by the Chinese. This is greatly detested by the management of the country of the Philippines. Her name is Jed C. J-E-D, and her last name is S-Y, a Chinese name. That's me here talking to her. Now, I wrote about this in a travel blog that some of you may have read about her story, and this was read by a newspaper columnist in Washington, D.C., who does a regular column in the newspaper. He contacted me and said, would it do good if we could interview you or Earl Romer and do a national story about Jed C.? Would this help in the case? We're still trying to figure out what the best way to go about this would be, because would this hurt her case or hinder her case? But nonetheless, they would like to do a story about her being in prison and bring more public attention, perhaps bring a little bit of pressure to bear upon the authorities there to release her, which she so desperately wants to be released, doesn't want to spend the rest of her life. She's in her 30s now and already spent eight years going on nine years in jail. So we hope to have some word on that. I'll be contacting them. I sent them all the articles that we had in the United News. We actually sent them the article from the local newspaper that talks about the case as it was tried in the Philippines in 2005. And also, the local United News in the Philippines had more stories about her and her own stories. This is her brother. I did not take this picture. He actually has also a story similar as far as his trustworthiness at the prison. The prison that he's in has 5,000 inmates, of which 500 are the maximum security ward. By the way, it might just say that the picture that I took of Jed C, pictures were not allowed. But we had to go back to the prison after we had visited her brother to pick up something that was forgotten. And they just let her bring it out to the car. And I just took my camera out and boom, you know, I just took her took her picture. And she said it's okay to put maybe one or two up on the internet, but not to have too many. But this is her brother, Jong Pilipol. And he actually has a Facebook page, even though he's in maximum security prison. But not only is he in maximum security, he's the manager. He's the one that is the one in charge of the prisoners. So we call them Joseph and Josephine, you know, both of them like Joseph in Egypt, you know, who was tried for, you know, put into prison for a crime that he didn't commit and spent a long time. We don't know how many years exactly.

Maybe we do, about Joseph being in prison. But finally he was released. And we're hoping that the same will be true both for Jing Jong and for his sister, Jed C. He was in good spirits when we saw him. He says sometimes he gets into just a real frustration of God. When will I be let free? I've been sitting there for eight years in prison. We had a very good visit with him in the maximum security. I found this picture of him on the internet. Between the two prisons, there are miles and miles, many square miles of bananas. And we figured out how the system works over there.

They put people into prison sometimes for very long sentences, and that they work the banana plantations. And this particular banana plantations is an independent name of some sort, but they said it had a connection with Chiquita bananas, which is interesting right here in Cincinnati. But there were miles and miles as we were traveling down the highway of these banana plantations. Another one of these Texicals. He's never seen anything quite like it. Here's one that has six or seven people driven by one person. Here's a national animal for the Philippines. It's the water buffalo, and you see them working the fields. This is actually on the prison grounds. This is right there by where Jed C was located. And this is a church family. Right where the prisons are located, there's a church. In fact, someone has donated a piece of land, and we're thinking about building a church building on that land for a church of about 20-25 people.

This is about an hour and a half outside of Devao.

Monday, just a week ago Monday, we had a tour of the office in the Philippines. I was really impressed. I was really impressed by the cleanliness, by the cheerfulness, by just the whole look and feel of the office. It's their little home office. It has nine employees there, and this is the receptionist's VL. A beautifully contoured desk. I mean, when you walk into the place, it's just very inviting and very, very nice. They have a glass door, you know, I mean glass doorway here with United Church of God logo on it. And the building is in a former USAID office that was USAID moved from it, and United Church of God has a part of that wing for our offices.

We had an employee meeting where everybody was sitting there in the conference room next door, and I spoke for about an hour, hour and a half about what we do in the church and how the Philippines relates to the church here at the home office. I might just explain a little bit about some of the things that I said because it shows it's a story about how we are organized.

In the last two and a half years, we've organized our international areas, which they were somewhat organized that way before, into two different distinct groupings or two different ways in which we are organized or relate to the home office. We have the churches that are affiliates to us.

They have their own financial structure. They have their own committees. They have their own national councils and boards, even though some of our other areas do too. But these areas, when we have very little to do with them except to approve ordinations, in most cases we have very little, if any, subsidy going into those areas. And they are affiliated with us through the Rules of Association. And these countries are Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

The rest of the world is interfaces with the home office through senior pastors.

So senior pastors. Earl Romer is a senior pastor for the Philippines. The Philippines, back in 1996, when the United Church of God began, actually in 1995, or it was about that time, decided and made a decision to be connected to the home office by being directly governed by the home office.

And now we have made it official, I guess made it a little bit more tighter, with having a regional pastor oversee that area. That is Earl Romer. He is the office manager, even though he is a U.S. pastor living in Alaska, he is the one who is responsible for that area. Now, he will be going over to the Philippines for longer periods of time, and we're working on a little apartment for him in Manila, but also he will be overseeing the office in the south in Davao. We have nine people working there. We have people working in media. We have fulfillment of magazines. The magazine to the Filipinos, about 9,000 copies, is sent from the office in Davao. We had a good discussion about the various things that we do and how we can help them. I was actually quite impressed with how much the Filipinos themselves supply financing for their churches. The subsidy that we have is twice what their income is. However, what we subsidize in our African countries is far more. It's more like 80 to 90 percent. In the Philippines, we subsidize $2 for everyone.

Here's looking through some of the storeroom facilities they had there, the various literature that they had stored, and the fulfillment areas where they work. The fellow here on the left is Daniel Macareg, who is the assistant office manager. And there's the whole office staff with Earl, Romer, and myself outside the office building. Really delightful group of people. There's Ed and Lorna Macareg. It was wonderful to see them in their own environment. I've seen the Macaregs as they've come through here for the General Conference of Elders and other meetings here at the home office, but I've never seen them in their own location. It was just wonderful to see them, how they interrelated with their large family. They have a daughter who lives in the Visayas, married to the elder son, Ruel Campos, in the MacArthur-Latey area. Then Ed Macareg has three sisters and his mother living in the Manila area, the Metro Manila area. So they're all over the country. I have a fixation about these tactical. This one here is actually powered by as a bicycle, and this man may be taking his kids to school and may take three or four people just on a bicycle. From Mindanao in the south, we flew north to the Visayas. The Visayas is what I was pointing out earlier are a series of many, many islands in the central part of Philippines. The northern part is a large island, the southern part is a large island, but this middle part are known as the Visayas. This was the airline that took us around, the Philippine Airlines. Every one of our flights was late. P-A-L, Philippine Airlines stands for plane always late, and we weren't disappointed at all. Here we are about to land in Takloban, which is the capital of Leytey, one of the larger islands in the Visayas. This is coming in in the evening. Spectacular view of just hundreds and hundreds of islands in this area. And we were picked up by the two ministers in the area, Braul, Bilacote, and Jose Campos.

Both of them had originally come from the Jerusalem Church of God, which was connected in one loose manner with the Church of God's Seventh Day. And the doctrines were quite similar. I'm not sure exactly why they associate with the United Church of God, but they have found this to be their church and their home. They still have a good relationship with the Jerusalem Church of God, but they oversee a number of churches in the Visayas. The most notable of the churches is one that's on the island just west of them, the island of Cebu. They held a kingdom of God seminar there, and they were held a kingdom of God seminar there last year. And about 25 people came to that kingdom of God seminar. 20 of them, 18 to 20 of them, are still meeting with them every Sabbath. Every Sabbath. To me, it's just a wonderful story about something really working out. And they go there, they talk with them, the congregation has developed a sense of being its own church, starting from ground zero, where there was no church at all, but something that was formed directly, specifically, from the kingdom of God seminars.

We had an evening here with them when we arrived. Here's daughter of Ed Morlum-Mackarig, Meryl, and her husband is Ruel, who is the son of Jose Campos and his mother, Deodita. Here's Raul and his wife, Marita. Here's Oromar, and here were some of the other leaders. And when we arrived in the evening, which was way late from what we should have been, we still had dinner at our hotel and had a chance to fellowship and talk with one another and get to know each other. Here's Meryl and her husband, Ruel. And here are some of the other leaders with Earl Oromar.

There's Raul Villacate and his wife, Marita. He also pastors, oversees, a group of Filipinos living in Malaysia.

And there's Jose Campos and his wife, Deodita. Very humble, very, very kind people. I was just very, very impressed getting to know them. Here used to be the longest bridge in all of Asia. It connects the island of Leyte with the island of Samarra, which is over a strait of water about two miles long. It was built by Marcos for his wife, Imelda. And it's called the Love Bridge because he loved her, he loved the island that she was from, and so he built this island, which actually was a needed bridge between these two islands. But it's shaped as a big L and then a serpentine S-like, and the L is for Leyte and S is for Samarra.

Here's Raul and myself on top of that bridge. Very beautiful area.

There's all of us here visiting. This person here is the one that traveled with us as photographer, one of the employees at the office in Davao. His name is Roy Gillos. We got to really enjoying him very much. He has a wife and two children and one on the way, but just thoroughly appreciated to get to know him.

We went out to take a look at their church site and also a possible location for a Feast of Tabernacles, because a Feast of Tabernacles site is very much needed in the Visayas area. So we looked over the different facilities and we're evaluating whether that should be done. And once again, these rooms that have multiple beds was a prevalent feature of this facility.

Then, just south of Takloban, is where MacArthur came ashore October 20, 1944. He fled Corregidor, which is an island in the Manila Bay, in April of 1942, when the Japanese encircled it and ultimately took it. And he escaped from there to Mindanao by a PT boat and then on down to Australia, where he mounted the counteroffensive against the Japanese.

It ultimately landed in Leite. So here's a memorial to him coming ashore in October of 1944, fulfilling his promise, I shall return. Here's the actual photograph of him doing it back in 1944. I did not take that picture. Here's the group of four of us elders in front of that statue, which is really quite moving. Here's the actual site right behind the statue of where the Allies landed in taking Leite and starting the liberation of the Philippines, which started in October of 1944 and lasted until 1945, when they were liberated on July 4th of all dates, 1945.

I wanted to ride one of these jeepneys, and actually was surprised as to how airy it was inside, how comfortable the seats were, and it drove me around town. Roy Gilos, the elder's son, and I just took a ride around town. I also wanted to ride a taxi call. The hotel where we stayed at is a very historic mansion. It actually was a mansion in the city of Takloban, and they turned it into a kind of World War II museum. They had a lot of memorabilia, pictures, photographs of World War II, particularly of MacArthur.

This is some of the scenery. Takloban actually was a festival site back under World War II, Church of God Day. It's a very beautiful area. This is another notable visit that we had with a family in Takloban. They are relatively new. They just came into the church. Extremely poor, extremely poor. What he does is he's a driver of a taxi call. His wife had appendicitis, had to be taken to the hospital. He was not able to renew his license and had to pretty much ride his taxi call without a license.

He would do it at night when he knew there were less policemen out to check registrations. It was just very, very difficult for him. It was $100 for him to have registration renewed for his taxi call. Also, found that their daughter had finished school but didn't pay her school fees. She had a job coming, but she couldn't get her transcript, which was needed for that job. It was only $200. And their son, who was a master welder, who was 23 years old, needed some welding equipment to have some jobs and putting up gates, but he couldn't do them without the equipment.

So we talked to them. They're relatively new. And we made a grant on the spot there from LifeNets for those three things, which was just a little under just about $500. But just a very, very sweet family. We spent an afternoon there talking with them in Takloban.

Here's the name is the Laria family. This is Nicanor, the father, in front of his taxi call. So now he's able to register it, and he works. He nets $5 a day driving around all day long, collecting 20-cent fares through the day. And here's a water tank that the sun had done. He did the steel work and welding and putting this water tank up just down the street, maybe a few hundred feet.

And he just really needed to have his own welding equipment to have more jobs like that. So we were very glad to be able to do that. Here's Jose saying goodbye here to Nicanor. This is Raul Villicote, the minister there, and his sister, Mrs. Betoy, from Bacalad, which is in the western Viseas. It's amazing how with all the islands they have there, they still are able to get around pretty much by bus and ferries. And, for example, from Leyte all the way up to Manila, it's only one ferry that you have to take because of that Samara Bridge. It's only a one-hour ferry, but they could get all the way to Manila in about 12 hours.

But she lives in the western Viseas, and they only have one, I think, one-hour ferry as well to get to where they have to go. Here's Mrs. Betoy and her daughter, Sarah. Then from the Viseas we went up to Manila, the capital. That was where we ended our journey to the Philippines last week on the island of Luzon.

This is our pastor, Luzon, a super gentleman, Ray Evasco and his wife, Cynthia. They were here for the GCE. But he works in the very highest positions of government, and the next government status above him is that of the Prime Minister or the President of the Philippines. And she works for also a government agency that both have very, very good jobs and a very high standing in the community, and are very devoted and dedicated to the church there in Manila, which has about 80 people in attendance. We had 93 people because some came from some distance away. This is our new elder who has actually lived in the United States off and on at different times. His name is Benny Lorenzo, Benny Lorenzo and his wife, Gloria. You might want to pray for her. She's going through kidney dialysis and waiting for a kidney transplant, and while we were there, she had one or two treatments. But they're also a new ordination. He was ordained in a group of four in 2011. After our arrival, we got together with them and became better acquainted. I knew Ray and Cynthia Evasco. We had them all for dinner to our home during the GCE. But I did not know Bong Remo and his wife, Grace, who was the sister also of Ed Macareg, and Gloria and Benny Lorenzo.

We took all day, a week ago Friday, to go out to Corregidor Island. Now, I have heard of Corregidor Island as part of the history of the Philippines. I knew that there was something about Corregidor, Bataan, Leyte, all these places, but I did not know how they all related one to another. Corregidor is an island in Manila Bay. It's actually part of the area of Manila. We took an hour and a half boat ride out to Corregidor. It's a seven and a half square kilometer island. Corregidor is Spanish for governor. It's like a governor's island. And when ships came into Manila Bay, they had to stop at Corregidor Island to pay their taxes, dues, or whatever it was. In World War II, it was a fort. When the Japanese attacked the Philippines, the president of the Philippines, Kazan, escaped to that island. So did Douglas MacArthur, and it was an armed fortress that held out for several months against the Japanese. It was the second most bombed island in World War II. A surprise number one island was Malta in the Mediterranean, but Corregidor was the second most bombed island. The Japanese took it in April. But MacArthur was ordered to leave the island to prepare for the liberation of the Philippines by the president of the United States, Delano Roosevelt. And he had defied the order twice, but then the president said, you've got to go, you've got to leave as quickly as you can and mount a counteroffensive. And so he left by PT boat, headed to Mindanao, and on down to Australia, and the famous words, I shall return, were spoken, which he did fulfill in returning to Leyte, the statues that I had shown you. But just before Corregidor fell, just across the water, just probably just a couple of miles, right here, here's me standing on Corregidor Island, and behind me is Batan, the very famous area where the Batan Death March ensued, which the Death March actually started just a little bit north of here. But this is a province, it's a peninsula of Manila Bay. And there, tens of thousands of Filipinos and Americans were forced to march 60 miles to another city, to their detention camp. It was a very cruel march. The Japanese would just drive their vehicles over people, they bay-naded people at random. It was just a very, very cruel and abusive epithet of history. And that's where it is, Batan. You know, I hear these places, but I just didn't know really where they were, and this is on Corregidor Island. This was some of the barracks. They had barracks for thousands and thousands of soldiers. They had so much activity on this rock, and this was all bombed here in World War II. More of the ruins from that time. And the huge guns. They had the biggest guns in World War II that faced out over the harbor.

Here's Benny Lorenzo's son, Abraham, and his wife, Grayshell. This is through gun turret.

And we had an all-day tour on a vehicle like this. It was actually quite sobering about all the things that had taken place on this island. Here's a tour guide. He shows the grenade that he had found just still in that area. There's still dog tags that are found. There are still armaments, shells, grenades on this island.

He said he was involved with the finding of a dog tag of an American soldier who was killed. They sent it back to his family, and the family came out to the island to kind of bring closure to someone that they had learned had been missing in action in World War II and find it was evidence found of him. This is on top of a lighthouse in Corregidor. Again, this is Abraham Lorenzo and his wife, Grayshell. They were just married a few weeks before on the 4th of July, and it's a very, very nice young couple. They want to come to the United States for a couple weeks here. They both have very responsible jobs, but they want to come here during the ABC time here this year and just take a couple of weeks of classes.

Here's a Japanese mortar shell in the museum. Many...McArthur's revered...you know, sometimes people have said, well, MacArthur thought of himself as God. And they said, well, he asked any Filipino they know he's got. I mean, they have so much memorabilia, so much reverence towards him, and the town where he came ashore is called MacArthur. Here's a Japanese cave that was...they had many such caves where the Japanese hid out on this island during World War II.

And here's a Japanese memorial to the Japanese dead. And this was continually defaced by people coming by here. You know, they got the brave heroes that had been rubbed out several times. They had to keep putting it back in there. But they allowed the Japanese to have their location there, too.

There was an 800-meter tunnel dug in the middle of the mountain, and that's actually where the government of the Philippines hunkered down. That's where MacArthur stayed, and up to 8,000 other people stayed here on this island, in this tunnel. We walked the length of it. It had...the main tunnel went through the mountain. This is 800 meters, almost a kilometer. Then they had 16 different laterals, as they called it. They had different rooms.

They had storage areas. All this area was just dug out like a honeycomb through the mountain, and this is the main part. And we walked it from one end here to the other, the Melanta Tunnel. This is Abraham and his wife, Grayshell, and the boat that took us to the island. This is the church in Manila. This was a great shot, you know, here, of all of us together after services. A very warm, wonderful, veteran church of people that were just so enthusiastic. We were so happy to see them. They were happy to see us, and truly it was a wonderful day.

It's hard to believe that this was just one week ago. This is Pete Melendez. Whoops. Pete Melendez. He had been a minister with the Worldwide Church of God years ago, and he was one of the workers in the office responsible in part for church administration. And we both are wearing a 25-year watch from our former employment the same day. Again, here's some of the Macareg family. This is Mrs. Macareg the Elder Dolores Macareg, and this is another sister, Decima, and one of them is Rowena. Anyway, there's a Macareg everywhere in the Philippines. The children sang wonderful special music for us.

Again, people just love to have their picture taken. Then they had another group that were mandolin players, but they were so well behaved. They were so responsive. I didn't see people running through services. Their children were extremely well behaved and very respectful. This is, again, one of our newer elders, Bong Rimo. His real name is Adolphus, I believe. His wife is a Macareg. That's Grace Macareg. There's Ray and Cynthia Evasco. Finally, we leave Manila. This is just leaving the airport. I got this shot out of the airplane of Metro Manila. On the way to Tokyo, over Okinawa, and back home.

Some final thoughts about the Philippines. In our time, God has been doing a work in the Philippines and using this nation as a light to Asia. In a most interesting way, God has not used particularly at this time the Chinese or the Koreans, but He's used the Filipinos. Maybe it's because of language, partially, because English is so well spoken of, but the Church has always been strong in the Philippines. Even right now, it's one of our larger international areas.

In fact, Canada, Australia, and the Philippines are about the same size as far as the number of people that are there. The last round of Kingdom of God seminars, seven of the top ten areas around the world. In response to the Kingdom of God seminars have been in the Philippines.

And we have actually established a church as a result of the Kingdom of God seminars. One who travels to the Philippines notices a work ethic that is superior to many places in the world. The people really work hard. In fact, just prior to President Marcos, who came into power about 1965 or so, the Philippines were the second most prosperous area in Asia.

Number one was Japan, and number two was the Philippines. Then Marcos came into power, and he made all kinds of investments where money pretty much leached out of the country and left it to being one of the more poorer nations in the Asian Rim, where Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore are far more rich. The Philippines has a very sobering recent history of World War II, the story of Corregidor Batan Leyte.

The largest naval battle of all time was fought the Battle of Leyte Gulf, where 300 ships, Japanese and American, fought a decisive battle that was won by the Allies and led to the unraveling of the Japanese invasions. I understood on this trip about the Philippines, about who they are, about how they're organized in a way that I never would have understood unless I would have been there on the scene. It truly was inspiring to me to meet with the people in all parts of the country, to see their sincerity, their desire, and their faithfulness and loyalty. It truly was wonderful. It also has been wonderful to be with Earl Romer, who has adopted these people, in a sense, as senior pastor, but he's taken it very much to heart.

Earl Romer lost his wife, a wonderful lady, Carol Romer, a little over a year ago.

And he's thrown himself completely as his love of life, into serving the Filipino people. He will be holding seminars for leadership training. Actually, when I asked the people and I asked the elders, what can we do to help you with anything? They could have chosen any number of things. They said, please help us with training leaders. We need to have leadership training, which we're going to go ahead with Will Gusto, starting in December, with seminars in all three parts of the Philippines, and have them done more progressively, because they do have many, many young people. I was really very impressed with the number of young people who are in services that really want to do more things in the church, in the congregations.

To me, traveling and visiting, as I have, in the international areas, I realize this. In the United States, where most of the church is founded, the United States has only 350 million people out of the nearly 7 billion people that live on this planet. We have a great witness and great work to do yet. How it's going to be done? Will it be done in our lifetime? What means God will use? I don't know. I just see that there is a great, huge, big world out there that really needs to hear about the gospel of Jesus Christ. Where are we going with the United Church of God with this? I'm not fully sure, but one of my prayers is that God show us what we need to do. Please give us the wisdom. Please give us the resources. Please give us the peace that we need to be able to do a work and to reach the people that we have. We right now in the United Church of God—and I spoke about this in both services when I was there for church, both in Davao and in Manila— is that I'm so thankful that we have peace in the Church of God right now. Oh yes, we have our personality difficulties. We have all this. But we do have peace. We have one spirit that is working in the Church right now. We have the truth. As to maybe who else has the truth, it's not for me to judge. But I do know that God has a will to be done. He has a Church that He's working through. He has His greater Church, if you want to put it that way, that has a work to do. The United Church of God is one of the larger of these churches, even the smallest we are. We are one of the largest organized groups.

And I pray continually, just the way the Apostle Paul did, for the people, and pray for the gospel to go forth unimpeded. I don't know how big Paul's operation was, but God certainly opened doors to him in Philippi. He opened doors to him in Corinth, for example, where there are many people there, and something was done very quickly. There were places where the doors were closed, but there were places where the doors were open. And I'm saying, and I'm asking you to pray with me, for God to open the doors, now that our attitudes are more prepared and more right than they ever have been. I truly believe this. I've been with the United Church of God from day one, and I see what great work needs to be done. I can see how people are really yearning for something good to happen and to go forward. I see that we have peace. We have the environment to be able to do something substantial, something big, something that will make a difference. I truly believe that those days are ahead. The best days of United Church of God are ahead of us. I was so inspired by the spirit of the Filipino people, because with a spirit like you have there, nothing can be stopped. They have so many things that they organize and do in such a way that is so united, so family-oriented, so relationship-oriented, but it was so inspiring to me to see this. I wanted to bring some of this back. Maybe I really didn't fully do that. You have to almost go there yourself just to see how people work. But I truly am pleased with the United Church of God as to where we're at. I'm pleased with the potential that we have before us. I think that all of us really want to move forward, and we want to see God bless us. And God does want to see that as much as we do, perhaps even a lot more than we do. So let's ask Him to open our hearts, open the doors, to be able to reach. The billions of people is huge. What exactly it is and how it will be, I don't know. But I know that God can do what He wants. We have opportunities with beyond today, with print, with the Internet, that God can just make things happen, to all of a sudden where something tips a point of becoming something that's localized or something insignificant, to being something that is significant. I'm seeing that day ahead of us. At least I'm praying for that day to come. Well, it's been wonderful talking to you. This trip to the Philippines was most awesome and inspiring to me, and I hope that I've left some of the spirit of it with you.