Cat Halford

After eleven weeks the Doulos’ time in the Philippines has ended. Our third and fourth ports of Cebu and Batangas were similar to the first two in that the local people were so excited to see us! Our welcome in Cebu was amazing, with local dances and songs as we came in and the 130,000 visitors during our stay reflected this in the volume of books they bought! Batangas was slightly quieter than Cebu and Manila but we still welcomed 40,000 people into the bookshop during our two weeks there.

Cebu - Cebu was a challenging port for me as I had to do a lot of things that ’m not used to doing and that I find difficult. The first weekend I was esignated as the leader for a team visiting a local Church, which was rightening but good! The afternoon of that Sunday realised a dream of mine – was asked to be a clown for the visitors waiting on the quayside to enter the hip (the queues on the weekend were up to an hour long!). It mainly onsisted of falling over, talking through a kazoo and posing for what felt like hundreds of photos! I really enjoyed it though, especially playing with some of the street kids from the port area; they were so excited to play with the Ship’s Company during our time there and it was difficult to leave them and sail away. The rest of my ministry days in Cebu were quite daunting for me as I had to go out into university campuses and onto the streets to help local Christians do cold contact evangelism; it felt like a very un-English thing to do but I realised that what would be frowned upon in England was welcomed with interest in Cebu and I had some really good conversations with people about our faith.

Batangas - The voyage to Batangas was the best ever – we made good time and the sea was so calm that the Captain decided to drop anchor so the Ship’s Company could go swimming. It was a truly amazing experience; I’ve never seen such clear blue water and to swim in it was wonderful. Batangas seemed to fly by as it was a much shorter port than Manila and Cebu and I only had two ministry days. In my most memorable one I did yet more cold contact evangelism but in a very different context to the outreaches I participated in during our stay in Cebu. In Cebu I was usually talking to students who were comparatively well off while in Batangas I visited a slum village in walking distance from the ship and talked to some local women and children about the Doulos and our faith. It was strange sharing through a local translator but the response was again surprising for me. One of the ladies we spoke to was excited about hearing about Jesus. The children told us that they would be praying every day and reading copies of ‘the greatest story ever told’ that we had given them in their language.

Prayer Points

Praise God that the whole Ship’s Company got visas for Taiwan!
Pray that the seeds planted by the conversations we had on the street with people will bear fruit and they will come to know God.
Pray for the upcoming Sabbath week when the ship will be closed to the public so the Ship’s Company can refresh both physically and spiritually.
Pray for our communication in Taiwan; in our ports since November most people spoke some English but we now have to work through translators and whatever Mandarin we can pick up!
Pray for preparations for Japan – that the local officials won’t be offended by the ship’s Christian message; they are suspicious of Christianity and don’t want to associate with any group that has an openly religious message