Day 3 - Pill Popping and Fondant

If you’ve ever seen the show “Cake Boss,” you’ll know it follows master cake designer Buddy Valastro as he creates these elaborate works of edible art and has to transport them from his shop to the client’s party without the cake breaking or otherwise getting destroyed in some grisly fashion.

Today I met the team’s own “Cake Boss” and although he may not have the cameras following him 24/7, he is an impressive artist in his own right.

However, you’ll have to wait to hear about him.

Today we met the other team members who flew from Davao to Cebu to help us. They are a collection of nursing school grads, a pastor, a teacher and others who are ready to serve in any capacity they are able.

While we spent much of the day today adjusting to the new time zone, we also ventured out to the local megamall to do some shopping.

While this mall would make Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills look like Lancaster Drive in Salem, it also had a supermarket in the middle as well as plenty of pharmacies. While Don searched for meds, I exchanged currency (you learn just how weak the dollar is when you find taxicabs have to think twice about whether to take them.)

Once we got back to the hotel, we used a conference room to sort through the meds and pack them into bags specific for what the pharmacy needed. During the process, bottles were marked with various color stripes indicating their primary use. Red was for painkillers, blue for cardiovascular meds, etc.

We also started to create individual packs of vitamins from a garbage bag filled with 25,000 of them. It was a tedious task, especially given that our bodies were screaming fro sleep, but we had a few laughs.

One of those laughs came as our “Cake Boss,” Jade Gallardo brought Mary her own special cake for her birthday (May 15). He made the cake in Davao and managed to keep it safe during the flight, a taxi ride (which doubles as a scary Disneyland ride) and to my room where it stayed until dinner.

Mary had a great laugh and even intends to keep her topper until she returns to the United States. Apparently the fondant will keep a cake fresh without refrigeration for two years (kinda like a Twinkie).

Tomorrow we will catch a ferry to Leyte and to Maasin City before we make the journey to Limosawa Island on Monday. We appreciate your prayers and words of encouragement. Please pray that we will get all the rest we need tonight and that we will continue to have good health, safety and good weather.

Have a great Sunday – make sure you sing extra loud in church just for us.

God bless,

Sheldon