Fun at Valley Cathedral

As I said in our last post, we left the conference in Manila and headed directly to Valley Cathedral Children's Home. Unlike Manila, this is definitely on our list of places we like to visit in the Philippines. Not many places on earth are so permeated with love and affection.
Once again we had a great time playing with the kids, talking with the staff, and playing with the kids some more. As we were looking through our pictures, we realized that there were not as many of our trip this time. There are two primary reasons for this: I usually had the camera instead of Lisa and we were all too busy talking and playing.

Saturday afternoon, Greg took me to the village of Kakabay. Unlike most of my visits there, this time I had the opportunity to go with no ministry scheduled other than to sit and talk with people. I loved it! With Greg as translator, I was able to talk with Teresita, the widow of my friend Robuan.

Later I spoke with some young ladies who were busy making BBQ skewers. It was a community effort as some cut them to length, others rounded them, and still others whittled the points. I tried to put a point on a few when one of the machetes was not being used. There is a little bit of a knack required to do it quickly. I did not want to mess any up so I did not do it for long. They only get 3 pesos (about $0.06) for 100 skewers.

Diane whittling points on BBQ skewers.

Near them, a few boys were playing basketball. Greg challenged them to a game of 2-on-2. A few observations: it was fun, I am old, and sandals are not a good replacement for high top court shoes.

In the good news/bad news arena, Kakabay has a new well with good water, but as you can see in the picture below, the river is completely empty. (On the other side of the bridge, not in the picture, are a few pockets of nasty stagnant water littered with trash.)


Along with the numerous long-time friends we have at Valley, we made a few new ones. Don and Molly are long-time friends of Valley Cathedral Children's Home. Although we had heard about them before, this was our first opportunity to meet. They were both a great encouragement to Lisa and me. How fitting that when Don presented the sermon on Sunday, it was about encouragement.