This morning we visited the homes of several Church members around Davao City. Becuase this is a poor area, people have to be creative and industrious to make ends meet. One member helps subsidize her family income by making and selling peanut butter and another member helps to support her family by making beautiful cards from handcrafted paper. She actually goes and picks a kind of grass that can be made into paper using a chemical solution. The paste is placed in forms and allowed dried, and the result is a very nice card-quality heavy paper. They pick and dry wild flowers and apply them to the cards creating a beautiful hand made item which she can then sell. She is also trying to teach other members this craft and they are hoping to market their cards in the US.

After our visits we returned to the office and taped an interview with Ed and Lorna Macaraeg about their work and life in their part of the country. They gave a detailed explanation of the different office opperations, which are mostly a family affair. Most of their children are involved in different part of office work. Ed records a radio broadcst on biblical topics in the small studio they have. The program is aired on local radio stations. Mail processing, fulfillment, website development and maintenance, newletter layout etc. all these office functions are handled from their home-office.

Then it was back to the airport and back to Manila, where we arrived at 2:30 pm, to be met at the airport by Cynthia Evasco. Cynthia drove us to see the Manila American Military Cemetery which contains the graves of 17,206 American soldiers who lost their lives in the epic defense and recapture of the Philippines and the East Indies, as well as other US military operations in the Pacific. Driving through the cemetery, it seems to go on forever, hill after hill and row after row of white crosses. The scale of it is hard to fathom.

Such places fill one with both pride in the courage of the men and women who risked and lost their lives in the defence of their homes and their values, and with melancholie at the thought of such terrible losses and the waste of it all. So many lives cut short before really even getting started in life.

On one of the monuments are listed the names of some of the missing and dead. There was a Captain Meeker of the Air Force listed as missing in action. I wondered if he were a distant relative.

After a brief visit to the Evascos home, we enjoyed a nice meal with Rey and Cynthia Evasco and Eriz and Teresa Dizon.