When the doctor needs a second opinion

This picture is really apropos of nothing. It's a couple of chickens that were roosting in our jackfruit tree this morning. I just have never posted a picture on my blog before, so I wanted to see what was involved.

Tomorrow, I'm going to Manila with Pastor Rheynil and Pastor Alex. We're going to attend the 2nd Annual Theological Forum, coordinated by Asian Theological Seminary. The topic is something along the lines of "Naming the Unknown God." I don't think I've heard of any of the keynote speakers before, but some of the breakout sessions look interesting.

At any rate, I've been hurrying around trying to get ready, since we need to leave at about 4:00 tomorrow morning. Registration is at 8:00 and the first plenary session is at 9:00, so that should give us enough time. Pastor Alex told me tonight, though, that there are supposed to be 20,000 protesters in the street tomorrow, so we may have to avoid EDSA, which will almost certainly complicate things. I'm not sure how I'll do going to a new place without my regular navigatrix (Tiffany). My GPSr doesn't do me any good when I'm going someplace I've never been before.

Getting ready has mostly consisted of copying some songs from CD to cassette, because our car doesn't have a CD player. No, actually, it's mostly been trying to get the smell of vomit out of the car. Elijah didn't do too well traveling up Kennon Road to Baguio on Saturday. I think it's maybe only the second time he's had motion sickness, but he did it up right this time.

There was an interesting discussion at faculty prayer meeting tonight. One teacher was requesting prayer for a man who is having some stomach pain but the doctors haven't been able to discover the cause. Another teacher jumped in, offering, "Oh, I know someone else who had that problem. And they did an endoscopy and X-ray and everything and found nothing. Then they cut her tummy open and found out that half of her intestines were--what's the word?--rotten." Ugh. Not too encouraging. Then she went on to tell how the doctors invited the patient's mother in to see the problem for herself. I think, if I were the mother, I would take the doctor's word for it. Tiff said it's like when a mechanic points to some thingamajig in your car and says, "That's your problem, right there." Personally, I think intestines always look wrong, so looking at "rotten" ones probably wouldn't help me too much.

After prayer meeting, we practiced singing the WBC hymn, since we're supposed to sing it at graduation. It's even clunkier than most school songs, but we change the words a little bit at each practice. With a few more weeks practice, it will be completely unrecognizable by the original author.