I found out later what transpired when Grandpa was asked whether I could come with my mom to visit. Grandpa and Maria lived in reclusion and did not have many visitors. In particular, it was fairly unheard of for children to visit. Grandpa later told me that as he was pondering on whether or not it would be wise to allow me to join my mom in visiting, God spoke to him through the following verse from the Bible, "Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto Me. For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven" (Luke.18:16). On the strength of that verse, he invited me to accompany my mom to visit him and his Home.

So in October of 1983, Mom and I made the long trip from the Dominican Republic to the Philippines. I was overjoyed to see my dad again, and was also happy to be reacquainted with Grandpa and Maria and Davidito. I also met their daughter Techi who was four at the time. Davida also lived there with her parents, Sara and Alf. Mom and I spent a full month visiting.

Mom was in frequent meetings with my dad and Grandpa and Maria, so though I was older than any of the other children (two years older than Davidito) I still spent the majority of my time with them. The children were cared for by Sara, Dora, and others. I also helped out in the house where I could, for instance by helping to prepare meals or with the care of the baby—Mary Dear, one of Sara's daughters.

Once a week it was the children's turn to cook dinner—usually hamburgers with all the fixings—complete with mayonnaise that had been colored yellow, red, green or some strange color using food coloring. I'm not sure how much the grown-ups appreciated the colored mayonnaise, but things like that sure made dinner prep a lot of fun for us. Sara's enthusiasm in all she did was contagious. Helping to cook dinner had never been so much fun.

Grandpa would come to dinner a few times a week, and when he did, he would often end up giving a talk. Sometimes there was dancing after dinner. This didn't particularly interest us children, though, and we were free to go into the adjoining living room and play hide-and-go-seek, practice ballet, or engage in some other activity.

There was a long table that everyone sat around for dinner. I'm guessing there were probably twenty people living in the house at the time. Grandpa had things arranged so that he would sit at one end of the table, and my dad would sit at the other end. Naturally, I sat next to my dad at the opposite end of the table from Grandpa. The other children sat near to Grandpa.

Because I frequently had swimmer's ear, my ear was often blocked up. It was often difficult to hear what Grandpa was saying, sitting where I did, at the opposite end of the table. I would frequently question my dad, "What did he say?" I probably asked this question every five or ten minutes. Daddy would patiently lean over and whisper into my ear what was being said.

I was present for a number of Grandpa's talks that eventually became Mo Letters, for instance "Eastward Ho" (ML #1668) and "Eventually—Why Not Now?" (ML #1662). I also listened through a personal correction Grandpa gave my mom on the dangers of spending too much time in the sun which left a definite impression on me. There were many other dinner talks I sat through that didn't turn into actual Mo Letters.

I was used to an early evening schedule and was experiencing jet lag on top of it, so frequently I would fall asleep during Grandpa's dinner talks, which would sometimes go quite late, or at least it seemed late to me, as I was not used to staying up past nine o'clock. I found his talks to be interesting, but as interested as I was in what was being said, sleep would eventually overpower me and I would nod off, falling asleep with my head on the table.

Every now and then, Grandpa would get excited about something he was saying, and would raise his voice, or bring his fist down loudly on the table. I would wake with a start, sit up and ask my dad, "What did he say? What did I miss?" One night shortly after arriving, after I had thus woken up a few times, Grandpa hollered down to my end of the table, "My Lord! That poor child needs to sleep. Can't someone take her off to bed?" Then he kindly addressed me, "Why don't you just go to bed, honey? You've been on a long trip and you're tired, so please go to bed and get your sleep."

I started to leave the room, but he called after me, "You're not going to say goodnight first?" So I walked to the head of the table to say goodnight and give Grandpa a hug and then went off to bed, where I promptly fell asleep. After that, when it would start getting late, Grandpa would look at his watch and say, "Look at the time. It's already 9:30. Bethy must be getting tired. Perhaps we should send her to bed." So he'd ask me, "Are you tired yet?" I'd usually reply that I was. He'd then excuse me from the table so I could go to sleep. His kids, of course, were used to a later schedule, whereas I was not, and I was also affected by jet lag at first.

Grandpa was the one who first shortened my name to Bethy. He thought Bethy was a nice-sounding diminutive to Bethany. I liked it quite a lot and have used that as the name I go by ever since.

I stayed with my mom in a room next to Grandpa's, and one night after a dinner talk as he was making his way back to his room, having earlier excused me to go to bed, he and Maria came by my room to check on me and make sure that I was safely in bed for the night. I woke up when he came in the room and he came over and sat on the edge of my bed. I sat up and gave him a hug and he held me a minute and prayed for me. That was a tender moment which I'll always remember.

The house where we visited Grandpa was large and was bordered on one side by a golf course, and on another by a large, empty and somewhat marshy lot that was full of frogs—huge frogs! If you walked outside at night, you'd run the chance of stepping on one of them. Often there would be frogs in the pool in the morning that had to be fished out before swimming. I remember that the frogs would make so much noise some nights. When they all started croaking, it was amazingly loud. That was the house where Grandpa wrote the Letter called "The Hallelujah Chorus!" (ML #1586), which was a very positive outlook on a rather annoying nuisance.