Davao Weekend Trip

Seven of us are just back from a great trip to Davao City.  We left on Friday morning at 10.30am for the three hour road trip.  The main purpose of the trip was to visit an ex-Catholic family who all became born again a couple of weeks ago!  We went to the house late afternoon and there were tonnes of people there!  Couldn't work out who was who but they were all extended family.  Such a nice family and apparently them and there house had changed a lot since the other members of our group saw them a fortnight ago.  When the family gave their lives to Jesus they got rid of all the religious statues and ornaments from their house and it's made all the difference!  There were some amazing testimonies of the miracles that have happened to them in the meantime.  Had a great house group meeting there and some lovely Filipino food :-)

Brownie & Leah

Sweet rice in banana leaf, Chinese melon and Spanish bread - intercontinental!

Diane & Francel - cuties :-)

Mum & George

Me, Ann and JM (the old lady whose house we were in thought JM was mine and Laurence's daughter!  JM exclaimed 'they are white, I am brown!!. I was thinking, I would have been 11 when I had her!!)

Lovely meal of pork, king prawns, fish, vegetables and rice - yum!

After going to the local hospital for George to pray for one of our friends' very sick sisters, we went to our favourite Shakeys, yes we found one in Davao too ;), and then went back to the hotel for an early night.  I woke up at one point in the night and Laurence said he was on 'rat watch' as the last time my mum & George stayed there, George woke up to a rat on his head!!! :-o  It's a really nice hotel too and they were six floors up!  They got a free night for the ordeal but ironically were put in the same room last night! :-D

our room

view of Davao

This morning after breakfast we went to see the same family again for a short while then went over on the ferry to an island called 'The Garden Island of Samal'.  This island has a lots of white, sandy beaches and clear water.  There are several resorts on the island and we went over to see a house we were thinking of staying in at Christmas.  It's a bit off the beaten track though so tomorrow I'm going to look into other resorts.

A ferry called Nicole! :-D

Laurence on the ferry to Island of Samal

Approaching the port

View of the beach through the palm trees

coconuts at the side of the road!

We were on a deadline to get back to Gensan so after a very fast and precarious (!) drive home in the dark, and a quick stop at Inasal, we stopped for an ice cream and then came home so I could finish planning for my first lesson back tomorrow.

Poor Ann & JM had to sit in the boot all the way to Davao and back.

Really enjoyed the weekend and hope to do something similar again soon.  Looking forward to getting back to work.  Can't believe it's a year since I was doing 'fireworks' with my last class!  Time flies! I worked out that coming over here has been our forth move in the past year, so that might have something to do with it!