11 on 11.11

our church celebrated its 11th year anniversary this past sunday. 11 years of making disciples, training leaders and planting churches. unlike previous anniversaries, this year the leaders decided to keep the celebration low-key but glorious nonetheless.

vcf malate is one of ten metro manila vcf churches. the whole movement started way back in 1984 when Rice Broocks, Al Manamtam, and Steve & Deborah Murrell led a team of sixty-five American university students on a one-month summer mission trip in Manila’s University Belt. from a single church with a congregation of 150, it has grown to 10 churches totalling 24,000 members (as of december 2006) in metro manila alone. we are part of that 24,000. 🙂

i have been a member of this church for the past 5 years and this has been my spiritual family. here i have come to know spiritual brothers and sisters who support me, pray for me and laugh with me. a couple of years ago, they welcomed selle the same way they welcomed me. now, the same people do the same to her. 🙂

such is the spirit of this church. we are all one big family with Christ as the head. props goes to the leaders for making this church the way it is. it starts with our senior pastor, pastor jonathan (who happens to be our ninong also 😀) and his family. you can’t find a friendlier family than they are. the best friends, pastor ado (my first discipler and our officiant/ninong 😀) and pastor nixon are always source of laughter and joy. there will never be a dull moment with either of the two… even when preaching. 😆. and the young gun, pastor cj, who is always a treat be it preaching or hosting or simply talking to. with leaders like these (d ko na isa-isa-hin pa yung iba, ha… dami eh. you know who you are. 😛) and the grace of the Lord, it’s no wonder our church have grown yet maintained that family-like atmosphere it has always have.

in celebration of the anniversary, pastor jonathan preached about the church. not specifically our church but church in general. we particularly liked how he ended his preaching by sharing a story about the taj mahal.

the taj mahal was built by the emperor, shah jahan, in honor of his wife, mumtaz mahal. he was so in grief of her death that he decided to build a mausoleum to house her body. as the taj was being built, his grief turned into this undying passion to build a majestic structure for the world to behold. one day, while inspecting the construction site, the emperor bumped into a box in the middle of the site. irritated, he ordered that the box be thrown out. unknowingly, he just ordered to throw out the casket of his wife. (uh-oh)

the emperor meant to build the taj to honor his wife. in the process though, he was too consumed that he then focused on the structure and forgot the reason behind it. that was a reminder for us, the church. it’s ok to aim for excellent structures, the use of technology in services… and so on. but we should not forget the reason behind it all, which is Jesus Christ.


the performing arts ministry with some theatrical dancing.


the pastoral staff symbolically celebrating the anniversary with a birthday cake. 😀


the church’s “big daddy” giving out his preaching.


a view of our church from the back row.

since church is really family, churchgoing doesn’t end after the service. there’s fellowship at the back row… then fellowship at the lobby… then fellowship right outside the church doors… then fellowship at a restaurant… 😀 this sunday is no different.


(clockwise from left) julius, my lovely wife, selle 🙂, wengi, mother, ivy, daisy & jaja

in the middle of all the kwen2hans and tawanans, we got to practice photography a bit during lunch and had a few shots despite the limited subjects and confined area.


restaurant details in lomo.
(left) shot by selle. ganda, no? told you she can shoot too. 😉
(right) the mat had really, really nice patterns… especially up close.


(left) again, depth-of-field off a point-and-shoot.
(right) daisy’s attempt in replicating the dof shot. didn’t quite get the shallow dof but she got the tilted cam technique and timed a shot perfectly resulting in a nice candid shot. 🙂


got to practice group portraiture also. 🙂 you know them, they’ve been featured here before. 😀