December 2005 Philippines Trip
December 7, 2005 Report

When I tried to connect to the Internet via the dial-up connection available here in Pagadian, it took me over one hour to send the report to Leslie for her to forward. Since that time, I have not had the time necessary to write and send a report. This report will be a brief synopsis of the events over the past few days.

On Tuesday, we had 8 classes on New Testament worship, how to study the Bible, and how to establish Bible authority. Whereas we started with a little less than 40 in the classes on Monday, we increased to about 50 on Tuesday. The students have shown great eagerness to participate in the classes in reading the Scriptures, answering questions and being attentive throughout the day. The evening session with the books has gone slower here than in any of our previous training classes. A few of the students evidenced severe eyesight trouble which prevented them from being able to read the print in the books. A local doctor helped us out by offering to examine these men’s eyes and make them glasses for a little less than $7 each. When they got the glasses, they were very grateful and spent a great deal of time reading the books that they had been unable to read before. As is the case with each training program, many of these young men are simply overjoyed by the opportunity to study more about God’s word than they ever dreamed possible before.

On Wednesday, we completed our lessons on how to establish Bible authority and the studied about the mission and work of the church. Our number again grew to about 60 people attending the classes. With that number of students and the tables for them to use for the books as well as taking notes, the building is packed from wall-to-wall. The newer attendees fell right into the routine of good participation and attentiveness. As we have continued our studies, the progress of the students has been obvious as they have noticeably improved in their ability to comprehend increasingly difficult lessons. In the afternoon session, we turned our attention to examining the Bible’s teaching about the Holy Spirit. The afternoon session went well overtime as we saw the need to cover the lessons on the Holy Spirit in more detail since many of the men are from Pentecostal backgrounds and they face those errors daily. In the evening session, we continued to work with the concordance and the Bible dictionary, but also started to show the students how to use their reference Bibles and maps.

On Thursday morning, the classes began with my lesson “What About Speaking In Tongues?” as that spiritual gift was given in N.T. times. We also covered the duration and cessation of spiritual gifts. Steve Reeves followed with a lesson on “How Does The Holy Spirit Dwell In Christians?” Steve has done an excellent job of teaching during this training and I am looking forward to working with him in Surallah next week. Jonathan Carino then teaches on infant baptism and sprinkling versus baptism as taught in the N.T. After that, David Halbrook teaches on “Why Baptism?” David has also done a great job and shows clear evidence of his rapid growth in knowledge and ability as a preacher of the gospel. This afternoon, our lessons will be focused on Calvinism. During a break in this morning’s session, I will try to go to an Internet café and send this report.

The hotel where we are staying is a real adventure. My room has front and back doors to the outside. Both of the doors have openings of an inch or two allowing various bugs, ants, spiders, geckos, mosquitoes and other wildlife easy entry to the room. Since the television has nothing worth watching, these critters can provide the best entertainment available. The geckos seem to be at the top of the feeding chain in my room habitat. I have about 4 of the geckos sharing the room with me. When hunting mosquitoes, they stay still near a corner of the ceiling until a mosquito wanders by and then quickly snaps it up. When hunting a line of ants, the geckos run down the line of ants scooping them up like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. The funniest scene was when my biggest gecko all of the sudden took off at lightening speed down the wall to the left of my bed. I got up and slowly looked around the bed to see what he was hunting. It turned out to be a roach bigger than any I had ever seen. (Please remember that I attended FC in the old days and have seen some mighty big roaches.) Watching the gecko trying to eat this monster was a sight. I absolutely hate roaches and was pulling for my gecko, but he could not get the job done. At one point, he had the roach’s two back legs in his mouth and then took a ride, skidding on his belly, as the roach took of in a mad rush. Seeing my gecko had no chance of bringing the monster roach to its much needed demise, I interceded into the ecosystem and made the roach into outside ant food. The next morning, that death scene had become a new habitat that had attracted numerous species of very strange looking critters. Despite the entertainment value, I will be glad to leave this miniature zoo behind and enjoy the relative calm and great buffet at our next stop at my favorite hotel in Cebu.

Now, to my brethren at home in OKC, I understand that you are all experiencing some very cold temperatures at this time (your Wednesday night, my Friday late morning). Leslie tells me you might even get some snow. Though you may wish for warmer temperatures, please understand that I am very jealous as I am dripping with sweat from the heat over here. At this time of year, it is not anywhere close to being as hot as it is at other times of the year, especially around March or April. Yet, it is still as hot as our summer back home. If we could split the difference between the temperatures here and there, we would all be far more comfortable.

The Lord willing, we leave on a ferry tomorrow (Friday) at about 8pm out time. We must leave Pagadian by 4:30pm in order to travel to Ozamis where we will board the ferry for Cebu. We will sleep on the ferry and arrive Cebu around 6am on Saturday morning. Given the very tight schedule, I will not be able to write another report until we get to Cebu. The Lord willing, I will bring you up to date on our work at that time. Until then, please keep us in your prayers as we will be keeping you in our prayers.

Brotherly, Harry O.

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