Day 11 - Aug 16

Sunday is a day of rest and worship. We choose to worship today. We visited to several churches. First stop was our parish church, St. Gabriel. We attended mass at 6 am.

Second stop was the Manila Cathedral. There was mass so we could not stay long. We were able to go to a couple of their chapels and look at some materials on their history.

Third stop was San Agustin Church. It is about 1 block from the cathedral. Thankfully, there was no mass so we were able to take pictures. We then visited their museum. It took us about 1.5 hours to view the museum and we did not see everything! At the side chapel, buried there is the body of Don Miguel de Legazpi, founder of Manila some 400 years ago.

Fourth stop was San Beda - my Alma Mater. Since this is a few blocks from the presidential palace squatter, Arroyo, you can see the signs of an insecure regime: barb wires and fences. Anyway, that was not going to spoil our trip. Mass was about to start in five minutes so we just stayed there and took some pictures and left before the mass began. I plan to go back with my children so they can see the monastery.

We had lunch along the most expensive Highway in the world, that was named after Gloria Arroyo's dad. Ironically, she had the gall to name this highway in her father's name when there's question of corruption behind the funding of this highway. Lunch was excellent. We purchased live sea food and then the restaurant cooked it.

After this, we went to the Mall of Asia which is one of the largest malls in the world. It has a shrine to Jesus within its property. Sadly, it was closed. So we headed to the Pink Sisters' convent.

It started to rain hard as we approached the convent. The sisters in the convent adore Jesus 24x7. They are cloistered and those who profess their permanent vows wear pink. Hence, Pink Sisters. On entry, I felt peace. Of course, the Lord was there!

I spent quite some time before the Lord. It brought back a lot of memories because I used to come to this convent to seek consolation from my problems years ago.

After the Pink Sisters, we took a detour to my sister-in-law's condominium. It was quite impressive. From there, you can see the Lopez Building (where I used to work) and also Christ the King church, where my wife and I got married.

We then went to Padre Pio's shrine. When I knelt before his relics, it was a different feeling. I offered some prayers and then walked around.

We came home at around 6pm. I personally felt tired physically, but spiritually, I was very refreshed. It made me think for a while, that this is one of the blessings of being here - you are so close to all these channels of God's grace.