Day of Rest...ha, ha. Yeah, right!

Ok, we'll admit it. After 4 days of busyness, we were pretty tired. But it was nothing a nice, restful Sabbath couldn't fix....if only we had known that wasn't in the cards for us.

We headed to church around 8:30am and arrived in time for Sabbath School. The Church sermon was really good, it was done by one of our L.I.G.H.T. teachers, Davin. 

Davin is from Jamaica and is a very powerful preacher. He studied at Wildwood in the U.S. and is very passionate about teaching all things Health, Natural Remedies, and God. His sermon was about the foundation of the Adventist church and how the structure seems to be leaning (figuratively speaking, of course) He did a great job! LeAnne and I were just thrilled to finally hear a sermon in English again. So the fact that we could understand what he was saying made us like it all the more! ;)

After church we headed to Potluck. The Potluck in Santiago is much different than the potlucks in Palawan. Here, potluck is a lot like in the States: Everyone brings a dish to contribute to the Meal. However, unlike in the States, they don't understand the concept of THE LINE. Any Filipino potluck/meal I have ever been to is very stressful, in the way that, nobody waits in line to fill there plates. They all just go at it.

The best description I could give you, would be that scene in the movie "Hook" when all the Lost Boys are eating. They say "grace" and go at it. Heres the clip on Youtube. (The part i'm referring to is in the first 17 seconds, so you don't have to watch the whole video.)

Anyways, so getting food at potluck is incredibly stressful. Especially if there is a dish that looks REALLY good, you really have to fight. But anyways, so we had lunch and then, to our surprise, headed to a medical mission.

Every Sabbath, Wendy and Dwayne's Sabbath School class (which consists of many Doctors from the Adventist Hospital) go to different subdivisions and give free medical missions. A lot of people turn up to take advantage of the free check-up, diagnosis, and medicine.

Though Wendy is a nurse and has done consultations on many medical missions, she usually leaves the doctors to do the consultations on these trips and helps out in the counseling department. The people come by the "counselors" before they pick up their medicine, so that they can receive tips on how to change their health and diet for the better. 

We helped her in the counseling department for awhile....though "help" is an understatement because we didn't really offer too much information. So we just chilled there and prayed with patients.

Then Wendy helped to give massages to
those who needed one.

There were many people there.

After awhile we began to realize that there were a lot of kids there. Most had come with their parents, but others were just neighborhood kids who followed the commotion. LeAnne and I decided to put our years of Christian education to good use and sing songs with them.

We gathered them all together and sang EVERY song with hand-motions that we had learned in our Adventist careers (as well as a couple Tagalog songs I had picked up from my last trip to the Philippines) We spent about 45 minutes entertaining them with songs, and even repeated the ones that they liked the most. Then we started to lose our voices and we sat down.

However, by this point, we had captured the kids attention and they weren't about to let us go. So they sat around us and we spent the next hour or so being entertained by them. They asked us questions with the little English they knew and we asked questions in the little Tagalog we knew ("Ano ang pangaalan mo?" aka "What is your name?") and we spent the rest of the time learning little words and phrases in Tagalog. 

Then I brought out my camera and started to take pictures of them. As usual, they loved it and started crowding around and doing different poses, just so they could see themselves on the screen. They were so funny and made the time go by super fast.

After the medical mission we headed over to the meetings. Then, after 3 hours of meetings we were finally able to go home. We were exhausted! At the meetings, one of the teachers had made the comment that, "People think that Sabbath is suppose to be a day of Rest. But actually, God says that we need to rest from our weekly duties and spend the day with him. And the best way to spend time with him, is to share him with others. So on the Sabbath we should be doing Outreach, so that we share His love with others."...There is logic to that statement...however...we were really tired! So Rest was what we were looking forward to...lol, but regardless, we made it through the day and managed to have a really good time considering our exhaustion. Maybe we'll get some "Rest" in tomorrow....but we won't hold our breath ;)

"...Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath."

~Matthew 12:12b