Evangelism in Lucena

On Saturday, August 17th we boarded a bus at 2:00 a.m. to head to the city of Lucena. According to google it is only a little over 100 miles from the school, but because of traffic it takes around 4 to 5 hours to get there. Everyone was excited even though it was so early. 

 Nate and I had never been to Lucena so we were looking forward to this evangelism weekend. We arrived at the beautiful church where they were preparing breakfast for the students. 

 Pastor and Sister Pabanil invited us into their beautiful home where they fed us breakfast and served coffee and hot chocolate to everyone. It is very popular here to mix coffee and hot chocolate together, but it's a little too humid for me to even imagine drinking a "hot" beverage most days. 😁

 The church provided breakfast for the students. They laid banana leaves over the tables, put piles of rice, eggs and what they call 'dilis' which is small dried fish. Everyone put gloves on and then ate with their hands. They said this type of eating is called "boodle fight". Look it up, it's very interesting and was definitely fun to watch.

After breakfast we visited for a little while then Pastor Pabanil and Nate talked to everyone before we walked around the city to hand out flyers. We divided into 5 different teams. Some rode jeepneys and others piled onto tricycles. 

 Loading the jeepneys

 I met this little cutie while walking around. The children here are so adorable, and they love when the Americans talk to them. 😁

Lucena is a beautiful city. So green, and cows and carabaos were everywhere. It was a very hot day, but we had a ton of fun walking through fields and around the neighborhoods. 

 We stopped under some trees and waited for one of the groups. The greenery is so pretty! You don't see this in our part of California. 😀

 While walking through the rice fields, they assured us that there were no snakes. I just prayed and hoped that they were right. 😂

 We even got a smile from this cute piggy 

After outreach we came back to the church and the youth had another round of boodle fight eating. This time it was rice, fish and soup. The students love to eat this way and were very excited. 

After lunch we took a tricycle ride to our hotel. We rested for a while then met up with everyone at a coconut festival. Pastor Pabanil and his family walked us all around the event. 

There were many booths made out of coconuts and coconut trees. It was really fun and amazing to see.

 Nate and I tried a fruit called mangosteen. It was delicious and tasted like a plum. We really liked it. The fruit here in the Philippines is incredible, and we have definitely been enjoying a lot of it.  

I loved this little herb garden

 We had a fun night with everyone. 

The next morning started off with a bang! Nothing like coming to church and seeing a cobra curled up out front. This man from the church quickly took care of it. I guess it was eating some dog food that was outside. Yikes!

 Service started off with Sunday School. There were many visiting children and it was exciting. 

The students and young people sang several songs and then did a hilarious skit about being afraid of ghosts and the dark.
We enjoyed watching all of the bible school students help lead Sunday School.

They asked Nate and I if we would help pass out the snacks to the children. 

Look at all of these beautiful faces! 

The young couple standing in the middle (to the right of Pastor Pabanil) purchase snack for the children every Sunday. They give the money to a lady in the church and she cooks it every week. What a blessing. We enjoyed visiting with them.

 They asked Nate and I if we would help them pass out the snack. Of course we agreed! 

A little while later we started our evangelism service. Some of the students are from the Lucena Church so we had them testify, then all of the students sang "Isn't the Name of Jesus Wonderful". 

 Nate preached about Life's Greatest Invitation. We had 89 visitors and most of them were in the altar praying. It was a wonderful service. 

Afterwards we had a potluck with the church and students.
Pastor and Sis. Pabanil are some of the sweetest people, and we enjoyed visiting with them. They were so hospitable and made sure that we felt welcomed. 

Pastor Pabanil had one of the men in the church bring some buko for us to try. 

Buko means, "young coconut". It was delicious! We first drank the juice then they cut it open. Yum! 

After lunch we were all packed in the bus and headed back to school. The traffic was so bad that it took us 6 hours to get home. We were nice and tired when we arrived, but we were thankful for another successful evangelism weekend!