Church

I thought it was 5 am, so I got up to check the football scores, but it is only 4 am, so I have an extra hour this morning, so I thought I would post an entry here.

Week 1 - Makati 3rd

We had been in Manila only a couple days when we first went to church. It was my first attempt to handle the road, and it was a little unsettling. Street signs aren't very prevalent, so it was hard to tell where I was. We took a few wrong turns, but eventually made it there.

We were informed that this was the church that most expats went to because it was primarily English speaking. Upon entering the air conditioned chapel, all of the Americans sat on one side of the chapel and all of the Filipinos on the other side. We tried to bridge the gap by sitting in the middle. The chapel was about 50% full. The last speaker was the stake president, who informed us that Americans should attend the ward they are zoned for and should not gather in this ward. Ah, nothing like a little "Welcome to the Neighborhood". Apparently there had been some push for an official English-speaking unit, which had led to some controversy.

After sacrament meeting, we met several of the other American families, who were quite friendly. In other meetings, I also met several other Filipinos, including a kickboxer. Boxing is much more popular here than in the States. In other classes, there was a mix of English and Tagalog. Mostly they would just say one thing in English and then translate it into Tagalog. I didn't think this was an optimal way to have church, but given the makeup of the ward, what can you do?

Week 2 - Fort Bonifacio 3rd

Now we knew vaguely where we were supposed to go. The morning started badly - I had misplaced our van keys. Luckily, our driver swung by our house to drop off his set. Let's hear it for drivers. I also had my glasses this week (I had left them in San Diego). Driving is much easier with glasses.

We met up with a few other American families to caravan to the meetinghouse. Our caravan of minivans went up and down some very narrow streets. After a wrong turn detour, we finally found the place. We arrived just as church was starting and barely got a seat. It was 100% full attendance. One thing that stood out was the singing was great. Everyone sang and they sang pretty well. This could be a result of karaoke being rampant in the Philippines. The first two speakers were in English and the last was a good mix of Tagalog and English. After the meeting we were swarmed by ward members (all Filipino) welcoming us to the ward. We felt very loved.

At one point, Laird requested a parent to be with him in nursery, then once I showed up told me he wanted to leave. We took a break for a while, but when the teacher told us she was bringing in the toys, Laird immediately regained interest.

The last meeting, priesthood, was in a pretty small room for the amount of people there. For the individual classes, they then divided the room into four. Unfortunately, the air conditioner was against one wall, and only two of the four classes got the benefit of it. I was in one of the rooms that did not get the benefit. We did at least have a fan, but there were still 10 guys crammed in a 6 by 15 classroom. Kind of cozy.

The only other interesting note was that the parking lot had spots for about 16 cars (most people use public transport). Unfortunately, with the four new American families attending, the number of cars jumped to about 20, which led to a lot of double parking. Getting out was kind of tricky.

We will miss general conference this week. Because of time zone differences they rebroadcast some segment of it next week. Let us know if we miss anything big!