Friday, February 11, 2005
Today has been an interesting and very long day. I’ll just touch lightly on what was interesting. First of all this morning we went to help the Zepata family, all of whom are Seventh-day Adventists, build a church in their back yard. We worked with all of them but especially noteworthy was one ole man—the “foreman.” He thought that he had it all figured out how to do everything, from sawing wood, to fencing, to the “Bible.” In short, he was a very conceited man and full of his own skillfulness. He kept on telling us how to use the saw and that we needed to “take it slow and easy.” Well, anyways, his constant correction was less than appreciated. We worked on the roof for about 3 hours until 12:00 when they fed us lunch. Lunch consisted of an ulam of some strange bean-like plant that you scraped through your teeth to get out the meat, and also some fish. It tasted good but later turned out to be not the best friend of my stomach. We also got a picture of us working.
Elder Cox working on the 7th day church.
The brother’s house by the 7th day church we were helping with
Elder Arnesen and Elder Zack Cox on the roof of the church we helped to build.
Us on top of the church after a morning of work
When we finally got back to the house, Elder Baylon and Elder McCauley were already there waiting to do Bro Andales’s interview. We showered quick and went over to the church for that. It went well and Elder Baylon said he was good to go. He will be baptized on the 19th of February.
Right after the interview we went out to Bro. Gregorio hoping to organize the program for the baptism. We found him at the long bridge working and also smoking a cigarette. Lazy Man! We decided not to do it and started throwing rocks and waiting for a jeep. We finally got a jeep back to Dagupan and visited with Brother Fantuyaw. We scheduled with him and he taught us some Mangyan words. Language #3 here I come. Joke lang! We also dropped by Bro. Pulido and he gave us some langka, jack-fruit, to eat. It was different but good. We had to wash our hands with cooking oil in order to get the stickiness off.
We did get to teach Jun-Jun Zepata today about prayer and scripture study. It was good but also really crazy because a lot of people kept walking in and out and making it crazy. We also had a good reading and testimony sharing with the Andales family. The spirit was really strong and we got to testify and also sing. I really do love singing.