Our Sunday has been both full and fruitful. We started the day by driving out of Ormoc City into 
Tongonan, a town about 40 minutes away. It is a restricted area which has a new geothermal power plant used to supply Cebu with electricity. The church has about 15 members and meets under a thatch annex to the home of one member. Willie Peleno preaches there as well as two or three other congregations in the area. I preached first on 2nd Timothy 1:8-13. Fred Ogario (from Cebu) translated sentence-for-sentence into the Cebuano 
dialect that is spoken in this area. Since Jonathan Carino speaks Cebuano, he preached next on the rich man and Lazarus. There 
were no non-Christians visiting, but one stray rooster wondered in and out throughout the service. The shelter where we met was right next to a long roosting area for laying hens. Though the preaching produced no human responses, it seemed to markedly increase production from the hens.After lunch, we went to the second congregation in San Vicente. It
was about 40 minutes from Ormoc in another direction. The church building is at street level, but the land drops off sharply going away from the road, so Willie and his family live below the meeting place. This 
congregation numbers about 30 to 40 after two congregations, now meeting in parts of Ormoc City itself, were started from it recently. Jonathan was requested to preach his lesson on “Obedience” as several of the teenagers had not yet decided to be baptized. I followed with a shortened form of my lesson on “Where Is Your Treasure?” At the invitation, one teenage girl responded to be baptized.
Immediately after San Vicente, we proceeded to Albuera. About 15 to 20 of the brethren were 
gathered for me to deliver a short lesson, though their regular worship had already been held in the morning. I preached about 15 minutes from Colossians 1:9-11 on “A Godly & Growing Life.” We had to be very brief because darkness was falling quickly and the building was a long walk off of the road, beside a field 
recently planted, down a narrow alley and past several houses. The building was a very nice, tiled annex to a very good home belonging to one of the 
member’s father. The one preaching for them recently attended one of the preacher training programs on a nearby island.We made it back to the hotel later than expected. Over supper, Jonathan, Lordy and I planned our lessons for the one-day lectureship tomorrow. The venue will be a function room at the hotel where we are staying. That will make it very convenient for us.
We have had an experience with the driver we hired to take us in his van from Tacloban to Ormoc last night and to the various churches today. Last night’s drive should have been about one and a half hours, but turned out to be three hours. This guy is the slowest driver that I have ever seen in the Philippines. On the highway, he never got above 50kph (that is 31mph). Most of the way, he was going less than 25mph, but slowed to 15mph or less through the mountain roads. The whole time he was driving, I kept looking at his profile and thinking it looked familiar, but could not place it. Finally today it hit me – if you could have given Nikita Khrushchev a very deep tan, he would have looked exactly like our driver! By the way, on the drive from Tacloban last night, I saw a new record for the number of people I have seen stuffed on a tricycle – 12! There was one driver, one guy riding on the roof, three on the seat behind the driver, and seven in the side car. They must have been extremely good friends.
On the drive back from Tongonan today, I saw the best business name on a sign in from of the building. It said the business was named “Lie-con.” Think they may have done some contract work with American politicians.
Must go for now. Thank you again for your thoughts, prayers and support in every way. May God bless your work in His service and keep you by His loving hand of providence.
Brotherly, Harry O.
