Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Happy Birthday Mama Mary

September 8th is the Virgin Mary's birthday, so my host mom asked me to go with her to go to a special chapel to offer prayers. We went to Maasin City and hopped a trike to Monte Cueva.

Monte Cueva is a cave where they hold services. Of course it was a cave that was at the top of a mountain that we had to climb up...holy cow was that a trek up! I was so sweaty I even used the towel down your back like the Filipinos always do.

Overall it's a pretty small cave I guess, but they hold regular masses there, so they had a keyboard and statues of Mary and Jesus, plus buckets to catch dripping water. They also had kids selling candles that you could light for prayers, as well as girls selling flowers to place at Mary's feet.

They only thing I question is, how old is Mama Mary?

2 comments:

Loren said...

Isn't there like, a HUGE Mama Mary statue in Maasin? Why didn't you guys stop there?

Connie Hoover said...

oh man, how could i forget! yeah, definitely got my picture taken at the feet of giant mary...which i might add was even higher up on the mountain than the cave...meaning i was sweating buckets by the time we got there! i think there's one down by the water also, but we didn't go to that one.