Day 3: Sunday 4th June

Today being the Lord's day we got up much earlier in order to get ready for church. All of the children go to church and most of the housemothers are members of Cubao Reformed Baptist Church (CRBC), which is the church that founded the homes about ten years ago. The church is about 20 minutes away from where we are staying in Mecena, which meant another bumpy ride in the minibus! As you can probably tell this has made quite an impression on us, but trust me if you experienced it you'd know why!!
Here we run on Filipino time, which seems to mean that if someone says we are leaving at 7:30 you can be fairly sure that you won't leave until 8! Even as we sit here we are meant to have left half an hour ago to meet Richard at the church and then go and see some of the sights of Manila!
Everyone is very relaxed and there is no particular timetable (which Sarah is trying to get used to!)
Once at the church the sunday school was due to start at 9 (so of course didn't begin until 9:30!). That lasts half an hour and is followed by the main morning service. The children have a separate class to the adults and then join us for the service. We were able to understand most of what was said during the sunday school as the Pastor used a mixture of English and Tagalog (Tag-ah-loh) and wrote on the whiteboard in English. The theme of the sunday school was church doctrine and we were particularly looking at church membership. The main service, taken by Pastor Ellis, was in Tagalog (although you can still pick out the odd English word), so we understood less of that. However Pastor Ellis realised that we couldn't understand and so gave us notes in English. With those and the few English words we were able to keep up with the service pretty well. The service was about the sending out of the 70.
After the service everyone stayed for lunch, having brought food from home. We were invited to eat with some of the members of the church and both the food, (chicken and vegetables, with rice of course!), and the fellowship with some of the people in the church was good. I am having some difficulty trying to explain where Shrewsbury is, I think most people think I live in Wales! We have also had some interesting conversations while we have been here trying to explain about the U.K. being four countries in one, and about our royal family! (Someone asked us if Diana was welsh (Princess of Wales)!! We were also asked if the royal family wore their crowns all the time! Although we aren't sure if she was serious or not!) I never realised our country set-up was so hard to understand!
After lunch the children, and some of the adults went upstairs to sleep, whilst we went into the library (it's got air-condtioning!) to read and continue talking with people. During the afternoon Richard went with some of the church members to an open air meeting, led by one of the pastors of the church, which was elsewhere in Manila. However as Sarah and I didn't go and Richard isn't here (I am writing this from the office which is on the site of the homes and at the moment Richard is still at the church) I will have to leave him to tell you about that!
After they came back we were given a snack of some sort of sweet bread which you are supposed to dip in your coffee, however I only had coke so I didn't dip it in anything, I don't think the result would have been very nice!
The evening service was at 4pm and again was in Tagalot, but this time with English hymns, so we could join in the singing but still didn't understand a lot of the service, even though there were a few more English words than the previous service!
We had to go dowstairs, (the main church hall that they use for services is upstairs with other rooms downstairs and apartments that are owned by the church at the back), for a short while while the members of the church discussed some business. The children were eating their tea when we got down there and they told us that it was squid! (with rice!) and they gave us some to try. It was Ok, sort of rubbery! I liked it but I don't know that I would eat it on a regular basis! We joined the members upstairs again for the Lord's Supper, which we only observed as, being a reformed baptist church, it is in the church's consitution that you have to have been fully immersed to take part in communion and none of us have been. Then it was time for Sarah and I to head back to Mecena, have something to eat (more rice!), and head off to bed.
We have not had any rain this evening so the air is a lot hotter than the previous evenings, making it harder to sleep!
Ttfn Becci x