A Fruitful Day

Today has been an excellent (and tiring) day.

We started by leaving the hotel at 7:45 for RUSI. RUSI is a motorcycle dealership. They sell motorcycles and parts. Lots of parts! The place is huge. Nita Elmaco (wife of Judge Elmaco) and member of New Life Church seems to be some sort of manager there. The owner allows them to have a daily Bible Study from 8:00 to 8:30 each day. There were more than 60 employees crammed into that room this morning! What a great time we had! Rick played the guitar and sang, I preached and Thamer gave a powerful testimony. The response was good. Mrs. Elmaco indicated that there were several who decided to follow Jesus. She and the church will follow up on them.

From there we went to the print shop owned by Mr. Cabellas, a Gideon whom we have met here before. There we purchased several hundred fliers telling about our revival services at New Life Church and the 9th Anniversary Service. We also bought 2,000 promotional fliers on heavier paper that can be used this week and in the future for visitation brochures for New Life Church and 1,000 similar fliers for Joseph and Juvy to use in the ministry of Mayaposi Southern Baptist Church in the mountains of Mabinay. We also purchased one ream each of personalized letterhead for the two churches. Both pastors were extremely thankful for these resources.

While at the print shop, we learned that Mr. Cabellas was a patient in Silliman University Medical Center here in town. This is also where Pastor Jonathan and Sis. Joan Ugdoc's 17 day old daughter is also in ICU. So we drove over to the hospital to see these folks. Silliman University Medical Center is the largest and best hospital in Dumaguete, but in many ways, the conditions were deplorable. While we saw some expensive looking medical equipment in the ICU area, the other conditions were more like you would have found in our hospitals in the late 40's or early 50's. Mr. Cabellas' room appeared to be unclean, and the hallways were cluttered. Still, the care available at Silliman beats anything else available on Negros Island.

Mr. Cabellas had been treated for blood pressure problems and was hoping to be released today. It will be a little longer for the Ugdoc baby girl. She has sepsis and is jaundiced. I don't know what all of the problems are, but she is a very sick baby. Pastor Jonathan and Joan tell us that she is showing signs of inprovement. We had a very emotional time of prayer with them and the baby. Rick Gunnell provided comforting words for them as well, telling them of the struggles little Ricky had at birth. He was in ICU for four weeks!

On leaving the hospital, we visited two electronics stores and found a good DVD player to go with the television that we had previously purchased for the New Life Church. While there we also bought a new microphone for the Mayaposi Church. From there we purchased lunch for the whole party and the Filipno hosts gave us a two hour break while they ran some errands and took care of some of their personal business.

This afternoon we left for the Batinguel area of town to do ministry in the neighborhood of the New Life Church. We did some house to house evangelism and also gathered at the home of one of the church members for a Bible study and witnessing time. I shared the gospel with about 20 people gathered in the yard and ten of the adults responded to the invitation to receive Christ as Savior. Thamer and Givonnie Valdez spoke to another large group of young people who were gathered at another home in the vicinity. There was a positive response there as well. Joey Spurgeon related the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the children there and he also did some ministry among a group of young men gathered nearby.

After that we "transferred" to the church where a number of the young people were making preparations for Sunday morning services tomorrow. Pastor and Mrs. Valdez, Pastor Zerna and newly baptized "Brother Tata" asked me to come with them to a little house just down the path from the church. This was Tata's brother in law. He has lived in the house since 2000 - the year I first came here - but today was the first time we were able to talk with him and share the gospel. I used "Share Jesus Without Fear" and was able to share the plan of salvation with him. He is trusting in singing in the choir at the catholic church to "hopefully" get him into Heaven. We shared the Bible message of Grace and can only hope that these were seeds falling on good ground!

We are all pretty tired tonight. Tomorrow morning Joey is speaking at a Bible Study hosted by Mrs. Lolina Allosa. Lolina is the wife of a former pastor in the area, Reuben Allosa, who is now not in fellowship with the local Baptist pastors due to some personal issues. Please pray for that situation, as Lolina and the children are very special folks. He will go there with Rowina Gantalao. Lolina has agreed to provide keyboard music for the Revival services scheduled for next week at New Life Church. I will be at NLC in the morning with Thamer and Rick.

We are thankful for a fruitful day in the work of the Lord.

By the way. Bobby Wood asked about the location of the cave in the photos from yesterday. That cave was located on Siquijor Island. I understand that there are also some caves in the Mabinay area - not too far from the Mayaposi Church. But we have never been there.

Thanks for reading and we hope you'll navigate back here for the next few days to stay updated on the mission work.