Days 23 & 24: Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th June

Well due to lack of time we've combined a few days just to let you know what we did on them. Saturday was a fairly uninteresting day compared to others but it was nice to relax with the children for a whole day. We were meant to go to the medical clinic that the church runs every Saturday morning but this was cancelled unfortunately. So we headed home and the rains started to come down. So we mainly stayed indoors with the children and they taught us traditional Filiapino games and we also played some familiar ones such as Twister (I actually played) and Memory.

Saturday evening was our Farewell party. It was a really lovely occasion. Each of the houses sang us a song as did the house mothers. Songs that were particularly moving were Amazing Grace (one of my favourites) and Friends are friends forever, if the Lord is the Lord of them (sang by the housemothers). The children played games in order to answer questions about each of us and Becci & I were tested on our Tagalog. We didn't do that well and for every time we got something wrong one of the girls was allowed to draw on our faces with lipstick. When we got something right we were able to put lipstick on the girls. I ended up looking like I had war paint on me whilst Becci looked quite hippy like. We sang wide, wide as the ocean again, presented them all with gifts and made short farewell speeches. Then we all had dinner together and took group photos. A very moving occasion that produced tears in the eyes of both Becci & myself.

Sunday was similar to previous Sundays with the services all being in Tagalog. However the morning Bible study was on different types of church governance and parts of it were in english so we could understand. We had dinner with the church members this time and then retreated into the library again to finish our books. It's been quite nice as different members have come and chatted to us and today was no exception. After the evening service we had church fellowship at the manse and this time the three American girls gave their testimonies. After that we ate balut. And here is what it is - a half formed embryonic duck with beak, feathers etc. You get it in an egg and you are supposed to drink the fluid and eat the contents. Thank goodness it was dark so we didn't see the contents of what we were eating. It didn't look pleasant but we downed it nonetheless. The taste was................ hard to describe but similar i suppose to a normal chicken egg. We had a large group of spectators delighted at the fact that we were trying one of their specialities. Would I eat it again.............not really sure.

A good two days. Luv Sarah