Two Baptized in Ozamis

After a very early start to the day with our 4am arrival by ship, we went to the hotel to get ready for the day’s work. After cleaning up, we ate breakfast and got away from the hotel about 8:30am. Jonathan’s nephew was our driver for the day and was a much better driver than the taxi drivers we have had of late. With a single case of near cardiac arrest, we made it to the meeting place of the Malaubang congregation about 9:15am.

As the brethren rearranged the building so we could use the projector for PowerPoint presentation, I made some quick changes to expand my lesson on “Salvation in Christ & the Seed, the Gospel. We had several Baptists, Catholics and Pentecostals in the audience (seven visitors in all), so we went directly to the heart of the differences in the teaching of the denominational world as it conflicts with the teaching of the original seed – the gospel of Christ. James Armada gave a summary of the lesson into the dialect. Jonathan then gave a lesson in the dialect on “The Church.” As he preached in the dialect, a thought came to me – John has turned into the new Cip (nickname for the late Cipriano Carpentero). Cip could talk an audience and interact with them in a phenomenal way that made him such an effective teacher in getting the audience to understand the points being made. While Jonathan used to leave that to Cip, he has now taken that needed place and does it with great effectiveness. It is an honor and a blessing to work with one so dedicated and effective!

During John’s lesson the heat in the building became unbelievably oppressive. As the sun bore down with an intensity unknown outside of the tropics, the building under the metal roof came to be like an oven. Put that together with the high humidity and I started seeing stars that began to spin and then things started going black. I have never had that happen before, though I have been very hot on other occasions. I caught myself as I was going down in the chair and began to force down water and Gatorade. At lunch and for the rest of the afternoon, I was a bit dizzy and developed a bad headache later, but it went away after a while.

After the lunch break, I got out of the raised pulpit to preach and gave the lesson from the floor instead. In the first sermon, we studied about the conversion of Saul to see at what point the Scripture says he was saved. When I finished after about an hour and a half, James gave a summation of the lesson in the dialect and did so very well. Jonathan then followed with a lesson by request of the brethren on “The Lord’s Supper.” Evidently, several in attendance had come from the “one container” faction, so the opportunity was taken to present the truth to them in the Cebuano dialect in order to make it as easy as possible to understand.

It was getting very late in the afternoon by the time Jonathan concluded his lesson, so James extended an invitation at the conclusion of the sermon. Two responded to be baptized into Christ for the remission of their sins. One was a young man and the other was a woman of advanced age who stated an urgency about being baptized immediately in the river that runs behind the building. She said if she waited to go home to get a change of clothes in which to be baptized, she might not make it back and she would be lost.