First Anniversary of Sister Church in Cabugan

in ASEAN HIVE COMMUNITY2 years ago

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Last Sunday was our daughter church's first anniversary, a few days ago, I made a tarpaulin design and the program of the event. I didn't know that the location was a basketball court, this church is just a house church in fact but for the anniversary, it was set at the basketball court instead and so the tarpaulin was not very visible.

But here's the design, the program and the tarpaulin looks very similar:

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Sunday morning, I got the program printed, just 20 copies though as we don't want to see many papers just disposed after. There was still a service in the morning at the main church. By 11:30 AM, church was done and we headed home for lunch. We got some church friends with us in the car, young people in fact who will also have lunch at home. We usually invite church friends to have dinners or meals at home, we love to have them.

At 1 PM, we were already on our way to the location, Cabugan is a part of the Catungawan Norte, quite a far place from the main town, this is a barangay which until today still has no electric power so we have to bring our electrical generator with us for this event.

It was raining though, in fact, it has been raining since morning. But the rain was just hard and stronger that afternoon that it looked like there was a storm. Still, the event has to continue. Upon reaching the location, we find our seats and settled while waiting for the service to start.

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As soon as clock stroke 2 PM, the leaders and pastors as well as the praise and worship team gathered to pray for the service. And it started with a prayer by our Senior Pastor Jose Felicia. It was just a quick one and was followed by the Pastor Fredo Bersabe, the head pastor for this daughter church.

As the pastor here, he did the welcome speech, giving us a brief history of how the church came to be.

It was nice to hear stories about how the simple Bible Study session became a church now. I was also happy to see the faces of the members there. The main church members were all invited to join the gathering too.

Pastor Bersabe has been active in his evangelistic activities, he has a lot of Bible Studies raining from Mondays to Sundays. He is currently holding groups for construction workers, house wives, and even groups of men.

The next part was the Bible Reading in 1 Thessalonians 5: 18. This verse states:

In everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

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The verse was read by Brother Alfredo Rio. It was only one verse so it was pretty quick. The next part of the service was the praise and worship. Since the house church has only limited instruments, the mother church brought the instruments and we had a full band. We even brought our projector and since we got an electrical generator, the entire event can be heard through the neighborhood.

The young people led the praise and worship. However, we were short of someone to man the Easy Worship app for the song lyrics and there was no other person who can take over but myself so I agreed to do it. I was actually planning on taking photos and videos of the praise and worship but nonetheless, I love to be of service to the needs of the church and this one here was part of it and I am glad to do the job.

The song leaders were Shane and Algie, both part of the young people. The songs sang were Mahal na mahal Kita Panginoon, a tagalog song about
how the author loves the Lord Jesus Christ. The lyrics went like this:

"Mahal na mahal kita Panginoon,
Mahal na mahal kita Panginoon,
Kelan may di kita ipagpapalit,
pagkat sa piling mo'y langit,
Mahal na mahal kita Panginoon.

Habangbuhay papupurihan Ka
Habangbuhay maglilingkod Sa’yo
Habangbuhay pag-ibig ko Sa’yo iaalay"

Another song sang was a Visayan song originally sang by Victory Band entitled Dili Matukib.

This was really a nice song. Other songs included "Sa Gugma Mo" which is another Visayan song as well as "Awit sa Gugma" and "Salamat,salamat".

I always love corporate worship and I am glad that the local government unit now allows more than 50% of people gathering in churches, this means, more members can go to church. We still wear masks though which is a little hassle in singing but it's alright. The important thing is that we are able to sing songs of praise to God.

The main part of the service was of course the preaching of God's word and it was done by Pastor Willie Vallespin. He had entitled his preaching as the Stages of Gratitude. But first, he shared about the gospel or the Good news because without having Jesus in our lives, we can't appreciate the gratitude that he was talking about.

Allow me to share with you here the stages that he had mentioned during his preaching. According to him, there are three stages, basic, intermediate and advanced levels. Depending on our growth as a Christian, we may fall into one of these stages.

The Basic Stage is when a Christian is still new, just a new born child. Thanksgiving is about the basic things in life, the positive things that comes into our lives.

The Intermediate Level is for those who are able to thank God even despite the enemies mentioned in Psalm 23:4-5. The enemies here are trials, problems, calamities, disasters. In encountering these enemies, we are thankful for the presence of God. That gives us happiness and hope.

As for the Advanced Level, this is a matured Christian, an example mentioned here is that in Acts 16:22-28 when Paul and Silas even inside the prison cell, they praise and thank God for they had shared the Good news despite being imprisoned.

As a challenge in the conclusion, Pastor Willie said, we must say thank you for God's purposes in our lives. His sovereign and we may not understand his purposes sometimes, only time will show and while we are confused and don't know what really is God's purpose behind these things happening in our lives, we must trust God and thank Him for everything.

We came to the special number portion. There were four presentations that day, first was a song number from Pastor Willie's family.

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The next was another song number from the Kids' ministry. Here below, Abby was playing the Yukulele while the three young ladies sang the song.

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Another song number from Biboy, still from the kids' ministry.

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Lastly, the GCBC and CGCBC women came to stage to sang another song. The young people didn't get to give their special number though but at the end of the program, they rendered some songs.

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The next part was of course the most exciting one, dinner time! It's an early dinner because we all had to go back to the main town and it was raining and the road back to the town isn't that nice. So it was five in the afternoon when dinner was served. Kids were allowed to get first and then the rest of the people around can get their food.

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While the people around were getting their food and eating dinner, there were some members of the church who had given their testimonies as well. Here's Brother Joseph Galope who had shared how his life was when he was younger. He was a drug dealer at an early age, he got into different groups who are troublemakers, his married life was chaotic before and his child didn't even know him when he got imprisoned.

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But thanks to God, God rescued Joseph from his old ways and had renewed both his mind and health. He got sick though but he was able to recover. His prayers was for his family to be reunited. This is still a work in progress but he has been praying for his child to know him and it was answered by God already and that's what he is thankful.

After the closing song was sang, everyone had the time to enjoy each other's company. I took a lot of photos of the young people and the members of the church. Here are some of the photos:

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Thanks for reading!



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J U N E B R I D E
Boholana | Cebu | Philippines | Travel | Photography Enthusiast | Calligraphy | Art
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 2 years ago  
Thanks for posting in the ASEAN Hive Community.

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