Grady and Karen's Philippines Cebu East Mission Experience: Magellan (0), Lapu-Lapu (1)

Lapu-Lapu Memorial

Magellan Monument

To be fair, Lapu-Lapu had home court advantage, but we'll get to that. President and Sister Tanner carved out some time in the middle of packing up the mission home to meet with the Cebu East senior couples for a mini-conference. Bells and Bocks came from the far reaches, while Tanners and McNetts came from the near reaches for a get together Wednesday evening and all day Thursday. It began with dinner Wednesday at the mission home with time to just relax and chat. After breakfast Thursday, the morning was dedicated to discussing issues and challenges we face here and how senior couples can assist. The primary focus was on how to improve unity in the mission.

After lunch we went to visit some local landmarks. President Tanner had to stay with the movers until things were loaded on the moving truck but was able to join up with us again for dinner at Cafe Georg.

This week we will focus on and show pictures for the first place we visited. We will try to cover the others in later blogs.

Pop Quiz.

1. Who was Ferdinand Magellan?
(Hint: Native of Portugal who, while in the service of Spain in 1519, led first European voyage of discovery to circumnavigate the globe.)

2. Where was Ferdinand Magellan killed while on his voyage around the world?

(Hint: The Philippines)

3. Was Ferdinand Magellan killed on Mactan Island off the coast of Cebu by the warriors of the local chieftain, Lapu-Lapu, who now has the city of Lapu-Lapu named for him, which is located in the Cebu East Mission and can be seen from the window of the mission home and is where the Cebu airport is located and where one of us received a traffic ticket for making an illegal U-turn after spending a night in the hospital with missionaries from the Lapu-Lapu Zone?

(Hint: Yes)

Someday knowing these tidbits of information may give you the winning edge in Final Jeopardy. We are just excited to know that a major event in world history took place right here in our mission.

Mural depicting battle between Magellan and Lapu-Lapu

The pictures below are from the waterfront next to the park. This is the area where the battle between the Europeans and natives took place. Some accounts have the Europeans outnumbered by about 1500 to 49. Magellan's boats couldn't get close enough to shore for their cannon to do any good and the men had to wade to battle in knee deep water. Not a good day for the visiting team, although lacking confidence was not a problem for them.

The tide was out while we were there and thousands of little crabs were running around in the sand. Notice how high the boats are that will be floating when the tide is in again.