From Dumaguete City, I travelled to Hinigaran, Negros Occidental by bus in about three hours and arrived there at about 11:30PM while Bro. Jimmy Estorya was so gracious to have waited for me at the terminal. Bro. Jimmy is our distributor for the southern part of Negros Occidental serving a number of churches in that area.
I slept overnight at their house and the next morning we traveled by bus to the town of Himamaylan where we took a motorcycle going up to Campayas, Carabalan which is about 20 kilometers from the highway on our way to a local church. This is the main church that has produced for the Lord over ten outreach churches in the number of towns in Negros Oriental. These are churches that's not easily accessible and most of which have to be reached only by foot. We'll have to reschedule our visit to these outreach churches with new Cebuano books to bring along. The church in Himamaylan and all its outreach churches regularly play the tapes of Bro. Branham.
I also was able to visit another minister, whose church is several kilometers away from the place. We've discussed with the two ministers many things particularly about their needs for more Message materials.
From Himamaylan and Hinigaran, I traveled to Bacolod and we slept there overnight for the next day's trip to Sagay, Negros Occidental where we visited our distributor for the northern churches in Negros Occidental who is Bro. Graciano Sacayan. Bro. Sacayan's church, which is about 70 kilometers from Bacolod City, is our distribution hub for the 14 Message churches in the Northern Negros area. He travels and delivers the Message materials that we send through him to as far as up north the Negros Island. There are still other Message materials that he has yet to deliver when we came over and he already has scheduled these to bring them to the concerned churches. We've also met the three other pastors in the nearby areas and we've had some fellowship together. They had been very happy with the Cebuano translated Messages and are very excited about the coming Cebuano Gap tape recordings.
Since there is really no way that we could ever visit every one of the sixty churches in the island of Negros, we tried hard to visit as many churches as we could within the five days that we've been to the Negros island. We visited mainly our distributors and main churches that have many outreach churches to understand from there the materials needs of the main church itself and their outreaches. We would also be able to know the needs of the other churches through our distributors. But there's indeed no substitute for being able to really visit each of the churches personally and fellowship with the brethren and to find out directly from them.
In Bacolod, I visited our librarian at his store in the downtown area and there I met with some other brothers. One other major thing that we did in Bacolod, was a visit to one pastor there who's had several outreaches in the Negros Oriental area and to discuss with him his needs for materials to support those outreaches. He's provided us with a list of new outreaches and ministers who have come to receive the Message and we sent the needed materials soon after. This has effectively increased the number of ministers in our mailing list on the island to 65, which will be further verified in our subsequent visits.
We thank the Lord for how He's been with us during the entire trip keeping us safe all the time. Although most of my visits to each of the churches were not pre-informed because of no means of communication, the pastors and the brethren were all at the scene at the time. And always, they were so surprised, pleased, and happy at our visits. On top and beyond all the efforts that we're trying to put forth in further serving the Bride of the Lord Jesus Christ is the joy of personally meeting them and embracing them, and to eat and fellowship with them, and even to sleep in their homes. We look forward to another opportunity that the Lord will give us to visit the other brethren in other places.
Thank you for your prayers and the Lord richly bless you.
Bro. Jeremiah