PBW#4 Parties at Our Church

Over the weekend, we attended two parties, a birthday one and a bon voyage one, both of which were held at our church. On Saturday, we headed straight from ballet class to a churchmate's 1st birthday celebration (hence Marguerite's attire). It was really fun. Marguerite is beginning to appreciate children's parties and now gets excited about the food and the entertainment. She's usually very suspicious of everything and takes a while to get used to new things, but that day, she announced that she wanted to participate in the game (fanning a paper fish) and was so adorable going at it even after the game was over, lol. She was the youngest, so she had special status and still "won".

For the Sunday afternoon fellowship, we had a send-off party for a member of our congregation who's set to leave for London tomorrow. We're very proud of Obet (Robert Racasa) for being the country's representative to the international Memory Championships (I'm not sure what the exact name of the tournament is, but it's for brainiacs, lol). He's Maf's husband and Antonella's dad. He was a chess master (I guess, he still is, but I'm not sure if he still competes) and now owns a school that offers courses on memory enhancement (okay, I'm not sure about the exact terminology - but if you want to be a more effective and retentive student, that's the class for you). Anyway, he demonstrated some of his super powers (hehe) yesterday at the party. We gave him 10 sets of 8-digit sequences and he was able to recall them perfectly. He could also tell you the day any date in history fell. It was really very impressive. The only other time I saw something like that, I was watching a documentary on "idiot savants" and Obet is definitely not one. He's the most down-to-earth person with the most side-bursting, hysterical anecdotes. Also, I'm not sure if they do it on purpose, but he and Antonella usually match in color with the clothes they wear to the worship service, lol. Anyway, we thank and praise God for this blessing to Obet and we continue to pray for his success and safety as he travels to London to compete. I'd include a picture of Obet, but the only good one has him posing with a string bean, lol. Antonella's in the pic below though. She's seated beside Marguerite. Our church is currently into banana leaf feasts, which are fun (not usually my thing, but I was eating with a group of dainty female eaters, so it wasn't too bad, lol).

To understand more what the memory thing is about, see 2 Filipinos to compete in int' memory contest.