Life near the deep blue sea...

Greetings from the lovely city of Cebu!

Things have been going great since I last wrote! We are currently in our fifth week of classes at the BSC. Next week our session is finished! We have had a lot of new students who have been coming pretty consistently. I have been able to teach three classes this session. On Monday and Wednesday night at 7PM I teach our class Jesus: Man of the Bible, where we discuss Bible study and the person of Jesus Christ. I have three students who have been consistently coming; Daniel Borela, Jesus Almadin, and Dan Torion. It's interesting having a student named Jesus, because usually we would pronounce his name as "Hesus", but he says that his name is pronounced with the "J" sound. He is the first Filipino I've met with the name Jesus who pronounces it the more Western way. Our classes have been a lot of fun, and we joke around a lot. During our class, Jesus read Revelation 22:18 which begins with "I Jesus..." We all had a good laugh about that :).

On Wednesday night I'm also teaching a "new" course of ours called Christian Evidences. I say "new," but it is actually a course which was taught many years ago at the BSC but I have reformatted and updated. It is a course on apologetics and discusses "contradictions" between the Bible and science. The materials come from a study program that was printed by the Apologetics Press many years ago. We first talk about the believability of the Bible and God and the fact that Jesus is a real person, then we move on to discuss the teachings of Evolution and the fact that it, just like Christianity, is a kind of faith. It has been very interesting reading through the material and studying about these things. I've been enjoying myself, and I think my students have too. I have seven students, all members of the church, including Sharyll Ybanez, Medina and Sheba Alda, Jessie Calde, Ernesto Abella, Ben Bayaton, and Mario Mata.

The third course I'm teaching this session is How We Got the Bible on Friday nights. In this course we talk about the history of the Bible, from how the books came into one volume, translators and translations, and how the text of our Bible was transmitted through the years. A lot of this course is a review of my studies in Greek where we talked about the science of Textual Criticism, which is where we determine what the original text of the New Testament should be. Gia Puzon, a graduate of the Greek program as well, is enrolled also and we've been enjoying traveling back in time :). I'm also teaching JM Cajilig, one of our young brothers, and Mark Anthony Abejo, a student we've had for a while that still keeps coming back.

Our Saturday Children's Bible class is going strong too. We have been taking the students through the story of the Old Testament and are currently talking about Solomon. Last Saturday I talked about God's gift to Solomon and the wisdom he received. We have a group of kids that number from 16-26, depending on school and holiday schedules. My sister-in-law Gina and I are the primary teachers and I have been enjoying it :). There is one little boy who joins us who is named Fritz who is about 2 years old. He is such a joy! When we sing he tries to do all the actions and sing all the words, and when we are in class he always pays attention. Gina told me that in class one day she asked him if he was paying attention and he immediately answered "No." He is honest! :) He is one of the children who you can tell really wants to be with us.

Things are going great and we are staying busy, busy, BUSY! As far as family goes, Mom and Dad are doing well and still working to get their business up and running. Jon, Gina, and Sean are eagerly awaiting the arrival of little Jasmine Rae, the newest addition to their family. Rach, Clint, Andrew, and Lily are doing wonderfully. Lily just had her first birthday and is now 1! Ah! Amy's back problem seems to be gone and she is very happy about that. And me? Well, I'm just trying to keep my head above the water! I recently started a new blog because our old system got hacked and for some reason everything is gone. The link is here. Check it out if you have time :). Please continue to keep us in your prayers!

It's a beautiful day outside, so I think I'm going to go outside and walk around for a while. May the Lord bless and keep you always!

In him,
Sara Murrell :)