First Time Visiting the Equippers South Manila & Equippers North Manila

Day Three/ Manila

 Just to let you know, my blog title "Think of Laura" is named after this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbpcEaeqot0 the lyrics are funny, but it's a Filipino singing it so it's perfect ;)

So today is Sunday so the plan is, is that I will be taken over to the North Equippers after lunch this afternoon to spend a month. I will then spend the remainder of my time in the South Equippers. I am very excited to get to attend my very first church service here in Manila at Equippers South Church. First arriving at the church, the people were very friendly and inviting. I got the chance to talk to two ladies who currently lead the care and connection team, their passion and hearts for the church is amazing and it really is an honor to get the chance to share and connect what we do in New Zealand and to help them in whatever way possible to make things easier for them. It's so awesome how they welcome people into the church with a line of hosts and they all sing a welcome song and have a dance to it too. I was standing at the entrance too welcoming everyone in Tagalog :) They have these amazing lanterns which they normally hang outside but because of the approaching storm, they were hung inside.

 We had a guest speaker today called Jonaver Luklukan he is a famous gospel singer and preacher. He spoke Tagalog when he was preaching but lucky I was sitting next to Ps. Ace and his wife Gee Gee so they were able to translate the main points across to me. After the church service, I was able to meet a few people and took so many photos it's crazy how much they love selfies here! haha Then soon after we all headed off to have lunch at a restaurant nearby. One of Gee Gees friends jumped in the car with us, she was very lovely and gave me a CD and some cooking chop sticks as a gift. I was sitting at a table with Gee Gee and her friend and we talked and talked about the Filipino culture and the church, 
we shared lots of laughs together- they have great sense of humors! I ordered pilaf with chicken it was yum and they ordered a mango crepe to share, they are very popular here and they have the best mangoes. After lunch we drove back to their home to grab my luggage and then head over to ps. John and Niles home in the North. It's a little sad leaving have been really enjoying my time with the Concordia family, but very much looking forward to being apart of the North Equippers Manila, what Ps. John and Nyles are doing and staying with their little family.




Lucky there was hardly any traffic heading over, it probably took us only 40minutes to get through to the other side. Once we arrived we pretty much got straight into the car to get to the church service which starts at 6pm. The church is located in a theatre in the mall, which is really cool because they have many people walk in from the mall to check it out. This church is full of life and energy as the church is made up of pretty much all youth and 90% new Christians! So as you can imagine, every member is on fire for God and many of the youth that have just been newly saved jump straight into serving on a team within a few weeks. Its awesome to see! Also in both the North and South church they have a dance team that dance at the front of the church/ on stage during the praise songs! 

There is a Typhoon coming in the Philippines so we are just praying that it won't be as bad as they are saying it could be. It hasn't started raining here yet, we are praying that it won't hit at all. Last time one of these hit it caused much damage, lives were taken and there was major flooding. Please pray for the Philippines!! So because of the storm there was a short sermon and then people headed off home to prepare. Nyles picked up a delicious long log chocolate cake on the way home and we ate in in their apartment with two other ladies. We then had three more guys from the pack down team join us as we headed to KFC for dinner! Now we ordered a massive meal for all 10 of us and it came to only $30.00 NZ!! so crazy cheap! Although it tasted and came different to how it is in NZ. There was rice instead of bread rolls and the chicken we ordered was pretty spicy and had a BBQ spicy sauce drizzled over it! The potato and gravy also tasted different. After eating we headed back to the apartment and I went straight to bed :)

Yeah Boi!! KFC time

 













The end of Day Three- Bye for now xxxx