Arrival in Manila

Dear friends and family,

We have safely arrived in Manila, Philippines last night around midnight local time. Manila is 13 hours behind Eastern Time US. We have had a good night's rest and are preparing for breakfast this morning at 7am and church at 10am. We were all very tired last night. The long plane ride from Chicago to Tokyo was very draining (13+ hours). Then we had a few hour wait at Tokyo before we took our last four hour leg to Manila where Alex Marcos met us at the airport.

I had two great opportunities during the first two flights we took. From Atlanta to Chicago I sat next to a man named Wes. We struck up a conversation and talked almost the entire two hour flight. It turns out he is from York, PA so we had a few things in common. I was able to get to know him a bit and plant some seeds of the gospel and ask some good questions. His mother has been ill for many months now, but they are not quite sure what is wrong. He told me that he is thinking about putting her in a nursing home, but she doesn't want to go. I told him about my trip and why we are going. He mentioned that he doesn't go to church because he's really busy. I told him that I would pray for him, his family, and his mother. He was much appreciative.

Then on the plane ride to Tokyo I was sitting next to a 10 year old boy named Quentin. We talked a lot and played some games together. I was recently given a Gideon's bible that I brought with me planning to give it to someone in the Philippines. Since I had connected so well with Quentin I decided to give it to him. I wrote his name in it and wrote that it was from me and gave it to him just before we left the plane. He seemed very appreciative. I couldn't tell if his family were believers or not by our conversations, but at least now he has his own little pocket new testament.

Now it is 4pm. We attended a really great church service this morning with 1500 people in attendance. The church has 5 services on Sunday with over 8000 people in attendance. Their church is located in the mega mall and the overflow rooms are movie theaters. I've never been to a church that big as far as I can remember. The worship was lively and refreshing as well as the sermon on generosity. After the service Alex took us to a restaurant to try some authentic Filipino food: lots of rice, meat, and sauces. Everyone enjoyed the meal.

Unique things we've encountered:

• crazy traffic: road lines are suggestions as well as stop lights
• ubiquitous cell phones: everyone has one and txting is more common than voice conversations, in fact people are known to carry on conversations with you while secretly txting someone else simultaneously
• we were served cheezit's for communion crackers
• the rest rooms are called comfort rooms

We are very excited to be here, and we are looking forward to starting tomorrow morning. Please pray for our team to have great success in helping the missionaries in any way that we can. Pray that the technology that we work on will be cooperative to what we are trying to do.

Sincerely,
Jason Wasser