August 12, 2019th Year of Our Lord

Dear family, brethren, and friends,

On Thursday, August 8, I awoke at my hotel in Manila before 4:00 A.M. to go to the Philippine Air Lines international airport for a 9 hours flight to Auckland, New Zealand.   I left the hot summer monsoon rains of the Philippines and arrived in the cold winter rains of New Zealand because it is well south of the equator.  Thank God I was able to study and nap off and on with smooth flying.

Randy Cabillas was waiting for me at the arrival area to take me to his house.  I appreciate their hospitality for my 8th visit with the Meadowood church.  The Ronnie Salunga family kept me in past years, but they have just returned from the Philippines because Ronnie’s brother, Ramil, died suddenly.  He was a faithful member of the Southside church of Christ in Angeles City where his brother, Lordy, preaches.  We offer our sympathy and prayers on behalf of all the Salunga family, and yet also we rejoice with you because Ramil was faithful to the end and died in the hope of heaven.

Randy and I walked after arriving at his house about 10:30 P.M., though it was windy with some light rain.  The exercise helps overcome jet lag and promote relaxation and rest.  I got to bed about 2:00 A.M. and slept soundly.  I must adjust to the 4 hour advance in the time zone.

Friday I studied, worked on email, rested, and took a couple of short walks.  That night 14 people gathered in the basement of the Salunga’s house where the church meets.  There have been conversions since my last visit, and we still have visitors who are solid prospects.  The lesson I chose is entitled “Helping Each Other,” which I presented at the Truth Lectures in Athens, Alabama in June.  This study was well received.

The last point touches on individuals helping each other in numerous ways including combining talents and resources to provide religious journals, bookstores, schools, etc., not sponsored by churches.  In the open forum there was some good discussion about churches avoiding centralization of funds and donations of funds to human institutions, and social gospel projects.  In 2009 this church began when the Salungas and other saints left an area church involved in such practices.

After dismissing, we went upstairs for snacks provided by the members and for visiting.  As typically happens, this gives opportunities for informal questions and discussions.  I studied for an hour with a young lady named Jean who has attended the services for the past couple of years with RonRon Salunga.  Her background was with an independent offshoot of the Catholic religion.  Having no foundation in the truth, she has been learning little by little.  She is full of questions, sincerely seeking.  I have studied with her in the past, and, of course, the brethren here have studied with her.

Tonight we finally got to the heart of one of the strongest points holding her back.  She came through some very painful and difficult experiences in life and she feels God helped her survive after her baptism in this Catholic group.  Her emotions say if she were baptized again, she would be denying that God had helped her.  I pointed out, to the contrary, God saw she had a sincere heat and helped her survive those trials, then opened a door for her to learn the true gospel of Christ.  Her invalid baptism in the Catholic religion was not the reason God helped her survive.  She said this study was helpful and promised to return.

Such occasions remind me why I make these trips and need to keep making them, regardless of the challenges involved!

Saturday morning Randy and I walked about 40 minutes and then enjoyed a good breakfast at a restaurant with outdoor seating because it was a beautiful clear cool morning.  Ronnie and Nina Salunga later joined us.  We learned that Ramil had suffered a heart attack and still had a heartbeat when the emergency squad arrived, but they did not administer CPR because they were not acquainted with it.  By the time they arrived at the hospital, he was dead.

Our studies today lasted from 2:00-4:30 P.M. with two of the four lessons planned on “Man’s Leadership in the Home.”  Young couples here are newly married and others are contemplating and planning for marriage.  The 15 who attended were really focused on the lessons and expressed their gratitude afterwards.

The service being dismissed, we again went upstairs.  Soon the same young lady wanted to resume our one on one study, and we continued for an hour and a half covering all sorts of issues about the reliability of Scripture, how to understand words in context, how to discern essential and incidental things, etc.

It was interesting to learn that she found Christians with tattoos and body piercing confusing.  Coming from the world, she knows these practices are most common to very worldly people – homosexuals, people using alcohol and other drugs, and gang members.  She gets mixed signals seeing Christians associated with such things.  (Is anyone listening???)

I told her that though no passage explicitly condemns such practices, Christians marking themselves with well known signs of very worldly people do not use good judgment.  We can hope they will mature and move beyond such things, but meanwhile she must look beyond them to the truth of the gospel and obey it to receive salvation.

It is uplifting to see how God opens doors for such people as this young lady through the efforts of the saints of the Meadowood church  – they just do not give up and are not ashamed of the truth in spite of their small number.

The 18 who attended the Lord’s Day morning services studied two more lessons regarding “Man’s Leadership in the Home” and were very attentive again.  The man and his wife we baptized a couple of years ago who had studied long ago in South Africa with Fred Liggin still worship here with their two children (Louneill, Cecillia, Lucille, and Devon Erasmas).  They hope to emigrate to the U.S. in the future.

Kyle Salanguit from Whakatane and his girlfriend “Kat” (Katherine) are steady members.  She was converted after Kyle’s parents offered to help her with directions in Wellington, and invited her to study the Bible.  Doesn’t God have amazing ways to open doors for honest hearts to find the truth (Acts 17:27)?  Kat pays close attention and learns fast.

At the 5:00 P.M. service we studied “Believers Obey the Gospel in the Philippines,” a report on my April trip introduced with an examination of the connection between faith and obedience.  Since most of these brethren are from that nation, they are excited to learn about the great harvest of souls occurring there in contrast to the difficult challenge of teaching people here in New Zealand which is thoroughly secularized and materialistic.

The open forum ran for about an hour with a wide range of questions including several good questions from Jean again.  It seems evident that the truth is gradually becoming clearer to her, and as she gains confidence in the truth of God’s Word, she is obviously thinking about her need to obey the gospel.

Someone else asked a perceptive question I had never heard before:  Is it a sin to delay obeying the gospel?  It is not a sin if someone is still learning the basics of God’s plan of salvation or is appropriately counting the cost so as to make a solid decision.  It is a sin if a person delays out of indifference or neglect or the sheer love of their sins.  In any case, if a person dies without obeying the gospel, they will be lost, and thus the urgency of learning and obeying the true gospel from the heart (2 Thess. 1:7-9).

The brethren did not plan a meeting for Monday but scheduled this day for everyone to rest.  Randy took me to Cornwall Park, advertised as “the oasis at the heart of Auckland city.”  Auckland is zoned with large swaths of land reserved as parks and walking paths designed to give the feel of being out in the countryside.  Cornwall Park is surely the largest with 425 acres and miles of paths and roads.

The summit of the area called One Tree Hill is a volcano cone 597 feet high crowned with an obelisk to commemorate the arrival of the Maori tribe from Hawaii about 1,000 years ago and in particular a tribe which settled there about 1700.  We walked for a couple of hours on various trails and roads, but climbing One Tree Hill was an interesting challenge.  Let me explain.

This is winter in New Zealand and temperatures are running mid-40’s to mid-50’s (7-13 centigrade).  Cold winds and sudden rainstorms make the air feel considerably colder.  After 30 minutes of clear skies and sunshine, the wind can blow in a thick cloud cover with sheets of cold rain.  After an hour or two, it may begin to clear up, but sometimes this dark cold rainy cover remains all day.

We got caught in one of these rapid weather changes while climbing the volcano road and it started raining before we reached the summit.  We opened a large umbrella, but the wind was so strong it turned the umbrella inside-out.  We finally got up to the base of the obelisk and tried to find protection from the wind and rain, but it was coming from every direction.  After about 20 minutes, off to one side the clouds began to clear and the sun came out.  As the clearing pattern approached, one of the longest and brightest rainbows I have ever seen appeared in a perfect arch.  It was gorgeous beyond words – a glorious reminder of God’s precious promise not to destroy the earth with a worldwide flood again!

After lunch we drove to a beach on the South Pacific Sea and walked again for about an hour – the sun watched over us and the fresh salt-air wind was more invigorating than cold.

As I have been preparing this report tonight, I keep waiting for the rain to break so I can take one more short walk before sleeping…but…oh, well.  It rains steady and strong, then breaks for a few minutes, then repeats.  No more walks tonight.

To all my dear family and friends who kindly remind me I “might” be getting to an age where an occasional day of rest would be appropriate on these trips, today was truly that day!

And, in spite of the rainy weather, for the last two nights I have seen the moon loud and clear.  I hope you can see it and know I am thinking about and praying for my dear ones on the other side of the earth.

In Christian love,
Ron Halbrook

To see good Bible study material, go to:
http://www.HebronChurchOfChrist.com
http://www.biblework.com
http://www.truthmagazine.com
http://www.truthbooks.com